The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Europe and Central Asia has released its 2024 Annual Report for the Slovak Transformation Fund (STF), spotlighting how its two flagship initiatives – the City Experiment Fund (CEF) and the BOOST impact acceleration programme – are reshaping the way cities across the region tackle entrenched challenges.
Funded by the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic, the STF entered a pivotal new phase in 2024, reorganizing its portfolio to create stronger links between its two core pillars BOOST and CEF. Together, these programmes are pioneering new approaches to urban transformation – from testing innovative finance models to driving portfolio-based systemic change in cities.
The City Experiment Fund delivered visible, systemic transformations across five cities. In Almaty, Kazakhstan, the “Green and Safe Streets” initiative reframed air quality as a public health and urban design challenge. In Pljevlja, Montenegro, the Fund helped anchor just transition as a national priority, scaling a local energy efficiency programme and unlocking over €10 million in EU support. In Pristina, Kosovo [1], a comprehensive urban regeneration plan delivered safer infrastructure, new public spaces, and greener mobility. Skopje’s biohacking lab became a flagship for community-driven innovation, engaging students in hands-on experiments and generating more than 50+ biowaste-based prototypes, while Stepanavan in Armenia a new Digital Learning and Youth Hub engaged young people and helped attract new talent to the city, contributing to reversing depopulation trends.
Through BOOST, UNDP catalyzed a regional ecosystem for innovative urban finance. The BOOST Urban Future Finance Challenge selected 19 organizations, businesses and cities from the Western Balkans, surfacing solutions that ranged from quadratic funding for citizen-led budgeting to blockchain-enabled green tokens rewarding sustainable behavior. The programme also expanded its city-level work: in Ukraine, BOOST teamed up with the EU-funded Mayors for Economic Growth initiative, activating entrepreneurial ecosystems in Mykolaiv and Ternopil to support local green and blue innovation.
The Annual Report also reflects on challenges – from political volatility to resource constraints – while underscoring lessons for the future: the importance of embedding citizen participation in municipal planning, building long-term local capabilities, and ensuring that every intervention has a pathway to financial sustainability.
Drawing on the challenges encountered, and lessons learned in 2024, the annual report provides forward-looking guidance for partners and cities. As part of this effort, the Innovation team at UNDP in Europe and Central Asia has developed the STF Knowledge Bot, an experimental tool for sharing project knowledge across UNDP, partners and cities. Running for three months, this initiative will aim to determine the relevance of knowledge-sharing in this format and identify the most effective methods to support it.
Looking ahead, the STF will continue until 2028, positioning BOOST and CEF as central initiatives in UNDP’s regional efforts to accelerate green and digital transitions, and to support cities as laboratories for inclusive, sustainable development.
[1] References to Kosovo in this website shall be understood to be in the context of United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999).
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