The Partnerships for Advancing Women in Economic Development (PAWED), has decried what it called ‘’grossly inadequate funding allocated to women’s economic development in the proposed 2024 budget.’’
PAWED, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s grant to the Development Research and Project Centre (dRPC), stated that the proposed 2024 budget for women of N12.59 billion, compared to N78 billion in 2023, represented an 82% cut at a time when the government is advocating increased investment in women’s economic empowerment through its ‘Renewed Hope’ agenda.
Addressing a press conference yesterday, Chief Funmilayo Arowoogun, National President of NECA, National Entrepreneurship Women, 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. 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 N12.59 billion for women’s economic empowerment projects in the 2024 estimates, we observe that this allocation represents an 82% reduction from the 2023 allocation of N72 billion.
‘’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.”
Other members of the group are the Association of Women Entrepreneurs (AWITA), National Association of Women Entrepreneurs (NAWE), and National Council for Women Societies (NCWS)
The group added that compared with the 2023 provisions, which had over 442 WEE projects for women, youth and others, the 2024 proposal has only 107 projects.
‘’Even when the N12.57 billion allocation to the WEE lines targeting women, youth and others is added to the N12.59 allocation for women-only WEE projects, the 2024 allocation for WEE remains the lowest since 2019. Less than one percent of the 2024 budgetary capital allocation is dedicated to women’s economic empowerment.
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.
