Inadequate funding barrier to gender responsive budgeting - Forum declares
A national dialogue on promoting budgets that equitably responds to the needs of all genders in the agriculture sector has identified inadequate funding as a major challenge to gender responsive activities at the local government level.
Advertisement
It also mentioned that the delay in the release of the limited allocated funds also impeded effective implementation of gender responsive activities.
Patrons of the dialogue, which was held in Accra last Wednesday included directors, coordinators and other officers of the Departments of Agriculture of various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.
It was organised by two civil society organisation, SEND Ghana and OXFAM to track the impact of a capacity building session they offered to the MMDA’s on gender responsive budgeting in the last two years.
The participating MMDAs included Tema Metropolitan; Ga Central, North Tongu, Cape Coast and Ekumfi.
The others are Nkwanta South, Sefwi Akontombra, Bosomtwi, Ejisu, Upper Manya Krobo and Asuogyaman.
All the MMDAs, in their respective presentations, said although governments over the years referred to agriculture as the mainstay of the economy, investments into the sector remained very low at the assembly level, with donor funding being the main source of funding.
Impact
The representative of the Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly, Faustina Agarko, said gender responsive budgeting had helped a lot of people who were disproportionally disadvantaged economically, capacity wise, confidence wise and had limited access to land and other agricultural inputs such as seedlings and breeding stock, such as women, youth and people living with disabilities.
She said helping such people through equitable distribution of resources had helped to increase productivity, reduced unemployability rate and was helping in poverty reduction.
All the representatives of the various MMDAs called on the government to invest more in gender responsive activities at the assembly level because their combined efforts would translate into a national gain.
The Deputy Country Director of SEND-Ghana, Dr Emmanuel Ayifah, said gender disparity was deemed a general problem locally, particularly in the area of agriculture.
He said that could be addressed by implementing gender-responsive budgeting at the national and sub-national levels.
“In 2018, SEND-Ghana and OXFAM decided it was important to look at the issues of fiscal and gender justice in relation to budgeting.
So we decided to focus on agriculture because of our keen interest in food security and nutrition.”
“Since 2018 to date, we have been conducting training and sensitisation on gender responsive budgeting and like we are doing today, we have been following up to see how beneficiary institutions are mainstreaming gender into their budgeting and activities.
“Gender in this sense refers to all diversities in our population.
We must ensure that any group of people, men, women living with disability, who had been marginalised and disadvantaged over the years are helped to explore their potential.
It is one for all, not just women.
It’s all about equity,” he said.
Writer’s email: doreen.andoh@graphic.com.gh
