Nigerian women under the Partnerships for Advancing Women in Economic Development, PAWED, have lamented what they called “grossly inadequate funding allocated to women’s economic development in the proposed 2024 budget”.
PAWED is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s grant to the development Research and Project Centre, dRPC.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja, Funmilayo Arowoogun, National President NECA National Entrepreneurship Women, said the proposed 2024 budget of N12.59bn to women, when compared to N78bn in 2023, showed an 82% reduction at a time the government was promoting renewed investment in women’s economic empowerment under its renewed Hope Agenda.
She said: “Women representatives came together to spend one full day reviewing the 2024 proposed budget estimates for women’s economic empowerment.
“While we are happy to note the allocation of 12.59 billion naira for women’s economic empowerment projects in the 2024 estimates, we observe that this allocation represents an 82% reduction from the 2023 allocation of ₦72billion.
“We are even more concerned to note that we see only 99 WEE projects in the 2024 budget compared to 164 projects in the 2022 budget.”
Mrs Arowoogun said the review was extended to include economic empowerment lines in the budget targeting combined beneficiary groups of women, youth and others.
“We saw that the 2024 budget captured 107 WEE projects for women, youth and others,” she added.
Other members of the group are the Association of Women Enterprenuers (AWITA), the National Association of Women Entrepreneurs (NAWE), and the National Council for Women Societies (NCWS)
The women also added that compared with the 2023 provisions, which had over 442 WEE projects for women, youth and others, the 2024 proposed has only 107 projects.
“Even when the ₦12.57 billion allocation to the WEE lines targeting women, youth and others is added to the ₦12.59 allocation for women-only WEE projects, the 2024 allocation for WEE remains the lowest since 2019.
Less than one per cent of the 2024 budgetary capital allocation is dedicated to women’s economic empowerment. In 2023, almost 2% of the annual capital budget was allocated to WEE.
While appreciating the Federal Government’s commitment to the economic empowerment of Nigeria’s women as part of the Renewed Hope Agenda, Mrs Arowoogun also recognised the nation’s tight fiscal space, saying: “we believe that reduced funding for WEE will impact negatively on the achievement of government’s WEE targets.”
The group, therefore, appealed to the Federal government for an upward, more gender-disaggregated and beneficiary-specific review of the 2024 budget allocation for WEE so that the laudable commitments of the Renewed Hope Agenda can be achieved.
“Together, we can work towards a more inclusive and economically empowered Nigeria,” she added.
