- On the global market track to prosperity
Kampala: Uganda's finance ministry has ambitious plans to reduce the country's donor dependence. With foreign funds accounting for almost 50 percent of the national budget, officials believe a slew of measures announced in the 2008/09 budget could bring that down to about 30 percent. An enthusiastic Minister for Finance, Planning and Development, Dr Ezra Suruma, who calls his "a prosperity for all budget", predicts Uganda will be able to fund itself domestically "sooner than later".
Hopes are pinned on booming agricultural exports of tea, coffee, cotton, fruits, honey, rice, potatoes, dairy products, vegetable oil, poultry and fish. The government is investing billions in greater commercialisation of agriculture, improved seeds, building warehouses, upgrading the marketing infrastructure and the Commodity Exchange.
Tea exports touched 44,015 tonnes of tea last year. This is expected to increase to 46,000 tonnes, according to Isaac Munabi, executive secretary of the Uganda Tea Association. In 2007, earnings from tea exports were 47.6 million dollars as per official records. With some 21,000 hectares of tea gardens, average yields in Uganda are about 2,500 kgs per hectare, according to the association. Last year, coffee exports too fetched an impressive 21 million dollars, the coffee development board says.
The resource envelope for the current 2008/09 financial year is based on the assumption that a projected real growth rate of 8.1 percent will be achieved and that low and stable inflation will be maintained. Roughly three million dollars will come from domestic revenues comprising tax revenues of another three million dollars, non-tax revenues of over 70 million dollars and loan repayments from government parastatals,15 million dollars. Financing from the domestic banking system amounts to 160 million dollars. The difference of some 100 million dollars is support from external sources.
For the country's landless and subsistence farmers (70 percent of farm labour is women) the government has set up a land acquisition loan facility -- a revolving fund of roughly 3 million dollars. The facility is to be disbursed through Post Bank and participating small farmers grouped in cooperative societies or SACCOs.
Rose Nakito (40) is a resident of Mayuge district, in eastern Uganda. She and her husband Bosco Baligeya are farmers like their aging parents. Nakito tends coffee on a small plantation owned by her husband, to supplement the meagre salary he draws as a teacher at the nearby Wandegeya primary school. Nakito also works on a separate garden growing food crops such as maize, beans and potatoes to feed the family of seven and sells anything left over. There is rarely any surplus to earn her cash and she largely depends on her teacher husband for some money from the sale of coffee sales or his salary.
Uganda's secretary to the treasury Keith Muhakanizi told IPS that Nakito will be able to draw money from the revolving fund. An agreement has already been signed with Post Bank to ensure timely and efficient disbursement of the facility.
But independent analysts warn the budget may not be able to deliver on promises. Social scientist Dr Aaron Mukwaya of Makerere University says most of the plans may never be implemented since a significant portion of the funds are projected to come from donors who may renege on their promises due to the global financial crisis.
According to Mukwaya, the areas that Uganda's national budget seeks to address are popular with donors but are not necessarily likely to lead the nation to prosperity. "Our budget is almost 50 percent donor funded and when we look at the current economic situation globally, donors cannot provide the money. Yet the budget is emphasising public sector spending and the private sector seems to have been ignored."
The Uganda government has put aside about 60 million dollars for the National Agricultural Advisory Services -- to supply improved varieties of seeds and inputs to farmers linked to the production of specific commodities including coffee, tea, cotton, fish and fruits.
But Uganda has no control over world markets, argues Mukwaya. In addition, the budget's emphasis on technologically improved inputs are linked to the production of cash crops, which are largely the preserve of men.
The government intends to draw more farmers into commercial agriculture by improving marketing infrastructure, refurbishing 173 commodity stores, constructing warehouses and extending support to the operations of the Uganda Commodity Exchange (UCE).
But Dr Lawrence Bategeka, a research fellow at the Kampala-based economic policy research centre, says most of the farmers in Uganda work small land holdings and the national budget seems to be ignoring them. He says the emphasis of the budget should be on how to empower subsistence farmers.
"I was moving around upcountry and met a farmer who had 100 goats on a one-acre farm and could earn from the farm about 10 million shillings per year. That kind of small farmer could up his earnings if helped by the government," Bategeka says Finance Minister Suruma insists various stakeholders were consulted during the budget process but argues that while the 2008/2009 Budget may not have answered all the issues, it lays the foundation for progress.
But then can his budget bring "prosperity for all"? The jury is still out on this.
* This article was published by IPS on the 28th November 2008; the first of a three-part series that examined gender equality in finance in Uganda. It was written by Joshua Kyalimpa.
- Q&A: "How are we going to sustain gender approaches?"
Cape Town: The negative aspects of Africa's experience with structural adjustment programmes beginning in the 1990s have been well-documented -- facing high debt loads, African governments agreed to liberalise their economies, privatise public enterprises, and sharply reduce social spending with often painful effects on the most vulnerable. It was in this context that gender budgeting tools gained a foothold in East Africa. For more than a decade, Dar es Salaam-based Mary Rusimbi has analysed budget processes in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya to make them respond better to the needs of the poor, particularly women.
IPS: What are some of the factors that give rise to gender inequality in East Africa?
Mary Rusimbi: There are several. There have been quite a lot of efforts on more equal access to resources for both men and women in all three countries. Take land, there are a number of legal frameworks which say land in Tanzania belongs to both men and women. But when it comes to practice, customary law takes over - a process that prevents women in the villages from owning land. But when they do not have access to resources like land, women also cannot have access to banking and other services, because they don't have collateral and so on and so forth. So that adds another level of inequality.
Gender-based violence is another huge area where many women in all the three countries continue to suffer. ... As much as there are efforts to transform the situation, we still find it is a huge factor that stops women and men standing at an equal level.
And it makes women also move out of the public sphere when they live in constant fear. This is something public policy people have not seen yet. When you live in constant fear you cannot be a productive person. If it's not harassment at the public level, it's at the household level, rape, all those sorts of things ... So that to me is another big issue.
I think it is a fact that part of what perpetuates gender inequalities is that unfortunately, through socialisation and other processes, women have internalised it as well. So it's not only negative attitudes from men, it's also where women themselves have been made not to believe in themselves, and in the process a lot of other related inequalities have come up.
IPS: What tangible impacts has a decade of gender budgeting had for women in the region?
MR: At the local level, there are quite a few things. In the beginning we'd find people saying that budgeting is not for us. Using gender budgeting approaches, we have built capacity, helped people understand issues and how budgets work. In Tanzania and Uganda, civil society actors have taken quite a huge role in providing budget analysis.
Second, there is more interest by civil society in tracking impacts, in tracking public expenditure. I I should say the experience at the local level is richer in Uganda than Tanzania. Because in Uganda from the beginning, they stressed implementation at a local level so they have been able to work more with councillors and activate more communities.
The Ugandan experience shows there have been significant changes in budget allocation and awareness raising but also people trying to really understand how the budget impacts their lives. This is not a small achievement ...
I think the fact that governments -- and here I'm talking more of Uganda and Tanzania -- have seen that this is an approach that they could adopt. Here in Tanzania, there's a lot of training going on, in the ministry of finance, the ministry of gender. They are training their own budgetary planners.
I think that's an acceptance by the government, saying gender budgeting can be part of budgeting processes. To me it is an achievement much as you might say we don't see huge allocations out of that. In addition, there have already been sectors that have been influenced by the gender budget advocates, in Tanzania, I can refer to sectors like water. They have been quite a lot of allocations towards rural water, towards domestic water services, but also towards improving capacity and allocating positions within the sector.
IPS: What is the likely impact of the global financial crisis on these processes?
The more you have stable government, the more you have a stable economy, the more gender budgeting approaches can function. But on the revenue side -- again using Tanzania as an example -- more than 42 percent of our budget depends on donor finance. You can be sure that the financial crisis is going to have a negative impact. My biggest fear is how are we going to sustain gender approaches ... How do we say that gender approaches have to be part of what we're doing?
Maybe crisis also brings out more opportunities. Because I can see it happening in the US already, ordinary people are talking about macroeconomic policies or frameworks that do not work. And that is what gender budgeting is about, at least from Tanzania's point of view
Gender budgeting is not for us a technical process. It's not about saying, add this and push on that. It's about raising broader policy questions, questions about sustainable development processes, questions about where the money is going.
* This article was published by IPS on the 29th November 2008; the second of a three-part series. The interview was conducted by Terna Gyuse.
- Change comes to villages in Uganda
Kampala: In her village they call her ‘councillor'. But Jenipher Namugwere is no ordinary councillor elected by the people to represent them in the local council. She represents the women in her village, Kadoto, on an advisory council constituted by the Bulangira parish of Palisa district to assess and report their needs to a wider national movement that is seeking to involve women in the planning and budget-making process.
Palisa is one of three districts which is implementing a gender budget initiative spearheaded by the Uganda-based Forum for Women in Democracy (Fowode), with support from the UN women's agency, UNIFEM.
Namugwere says all the women in Kadoto want access to credit. While she wants a loan for rice farming, others want to start small businesses like poultry and piggery. She claims that following her report to the Bulangira parish development committee last year that women were walking long distances to fetch water, a borehole well was drilled at the village primary school.
"The money for credit schemes hasn't reached Kadoto," says Namugwere, but expectations are high among the women. Sarah Kagino from the Bulangira parish is frustrated by the delay. She says she has given up on promises made by the government to help women like her.
Instead she has put all her energies on a Friesian cow she got through Heifer International, a non-profit organisation. "I see women meeting in SACCO's (a cooperative society network), waiting for money and it hasn't come. They have been attending trainings for poultry, bee keeping, but I don't see them getting started on any project." Kagino is dismissive. A former agricultural extension worker, Kagino says by concentrating on her cow, she can earn the equivalent of 25 dollars daily just from the sale of milk.
Women in Uganda represent 80 percent of the agricultural labour force, and are responsible for the bulk of food crop production. But they have no control over the key factors of production like land.
Isa Taligoola, Palisa district chairperson, is convinced the money will come. "The most important part was to put the needs of women in the budget and this has been achieved. What is remaining is to disburse the money which we shall certainly do once the central government releases the money."
The main economic activity in Kadoto, one of the poorest villages in the district, is farming. The most common food crops are millet, potatoes, beans, bananas, simsim (sesame), sunflower, and cash crop, cotton.
Any investment in agriculture in Palisa district, aimed at improving production, will directly benefit women, district officials aver.
The Yoweri Museveni government has received international acclaim for putting in place an active affirmative action policy to reduce gender imbalances in higher education, governance, politics and management.
Palisa district has four government dispensaries, 25 health centres and one hospital. The health centre in Bulangira parish is run by a management committee, a majority of the members women as per the government's affirmative action policy.
Minister of Gender, Syda Bumba, believes this is a successful way to mainstream gender in the national planning process.
Julius Mukunda, director of the gender budget programme at Fowode, says the pilot project launched in the districts of Palisa, Kibaale and Kabale is set to roll out to several other districts. Fowode and UNIFEM have been working on influencing budgetary allocations to issues that affect women since 1999.
Mukunda explains they have conducted workshops with members of parliament, district councillors and other stakeholders as a way of influencing the budget processes. In the 2008/09 budget for example the government has allocated an additional four million dollars to the education sector, to support the twin goals of universal primary and secondary education.
Taligoola is optimistic that some of that money will reach schools in his district. Palisa has a total of 197 primary and 37 secondary schools.
Patricia Munabe, executive director of Fowode, affirms that while the Universal Primary Education policy, initiated by the government in 1997, has significantly narrowed the gender enrollment gap, just 42 percent of girls complete their primary education compared to 55 percent boys.
She says dropouts are due to a variety of reasons including financial constraints, family responsibilities, illness, early marriages and pregnancies. She claims Fowode's gender budget initiative is designed to tackle such issues.
Results are already coming in from his district, according to chairperson Taligoola. Drop out rates have come down to 40 percent among girls in Palisa.
UNIFEM'S Christine Nankubuge Ndaula in Kampala tells IPS that there will be susbstantive change when the gender budget advocacy campaign expands to more districts. The gender budget initiative, according to Mukunda, was launched following intense lobbying and advocacy with members of parliament who first enacted a law giving themselves a role in the earliest stages of budget formation.
"We made sure that we enlist the support of members of parliament on issues of gender budgeting and that means that they are themselves aware of issues of gender and can input into the budget process," he explains.
The campaign calls for public participation in the budget process to develop a gender sensitive budget system. Fowode's Munabe sees the process as opening the way for a more transparent and participatory budget process.
* This was the final article in the IPS three-part series that examined gender equality in finance in Uganda.
