It is widely recognised that United Nations development assistance must be made more coherent and effective at country level in line with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. A key area for improvement is through the establishment of a more holistic, transparent and resultsoriented budget process encompassing all United Nations (UN) agencies supporting Malawi. To this end, this study seeks to prepare the ground for the development of a single budgetary framework for UN development assistance to Malawi, identifying key opportunities and constraints to such a reform and providing recommendations to orient its implementation. A single budgetary framework is defined by the UN Development Group (UNDG) as a tool to clearly detail the totality of resources required to deliver UN development assistance and to facilitate the coherent management and fundraising of those resources.