Opportunities and recommendations
Despite the challenges mentioned in the preceding sections, it must be noted that devolution in Kenya is barely seven years old. County governments and members of the public alike are still trying to understand and navigate the new constitutional landscape. Devolution opens up opportunities for women and other disadvantaged groups to participate in policy planning, budget allocation and monitoring of expenditure,55 and there is still an important opportunity for county governments to integrate gender-responsive mechanisms into their developing budgetary and planning processes. Some counties, notably Kisumu and Kirinyaga, have made significant strides in generating sex-disaggregated data to inform their policy planning,56 and in developing frameworks to ensure that county budgets and plans are gender-responsive.57 Several lessons could also be learned from other national contexts, indicating possible avenues for progress.
Key opportunities for policy reform are as follows:
- An increasingly common practice in countries outside Kenya is the development of ‘gender budget statements’,58 which are typically presented before a given country’s parliament together with the budget itself. A gender budget statement details the social and economic impact that the previous budget has had, and the forecast impact of the proposed budget on enhancing gender equality. Publishing gender statements would allow county governments in Kenya to more effectively track the impact of their budgets. This could, in turn, inform the national agenda and assist national-level budget planning. Thus far, however, Kirinyaga is the only county focusing – as part of its long-term strategy – on the development of gender statements to be tabled alongside budgets.59
- Kenya’s county governments can learn from the South African60 example and engage with relevant stakeholders, such as local community organizations and women’s groups, to leverage resources, knowledge and information. This is already happening to a limited degree, with the governments of Kisumu, Kajiado and Mombasa counties focusing on strategies to enhance public participation and engagement in budgeting, and developing initiatives to partner with civil society.61 They have an opportunity to engage organizations that have readily available information on the gender dynamics in each county.
- CBEFs provide a critical entry point for enhancing public awareness of gender-responsive budgeting. County governments must operationalize CBEFs, ensure that representatives receive regular training on budget processes, participatory budgeting and gender-responsive budgeting, and publish regular reports on progress. Through CBEFs, county governments can establish and coordinate sectoral working groups, consisting of major stakeholders, to assist in the review of budgetary processes and the promotion of public awareness. Stakeholders could include professional bodies such as the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, community organizations, civil society organizations and development partners.
- Devolution in Kenya created 47 county assemblies, constitutionally mandated to provide oversight of county executives and their spending priorities. Most county assemblies have limited capacity, and need training on the budgetary process and its impact on gender equality. County assemblies can also partner with civil society and community organizations to provide the technical expertise and data necessary to make informed decisions when developing and reviewing policy and legislation. South Africa’s Women’s Budget Initiative is a good example of a legislature–civil society partnership that can provide a template for policy in Kenya.
- Most successful gender-responsive budgeting approaches are initiated by finance ministries.62 A good entry point for gender-responsive budgeting in Kenya, therefore, is the Treasury, which is constitutionally mandated to drive development and to assist county governments in developing capacity in public financial management.63 The Office of the Auditor General could also play a role alongside the NGEC in scrutinizing whether public funds are allocated and spent in a gender-responsive manner. Such a ‘joint audit’ could highlight gaps between government policy commitments and investments. Ministries, departments and agencies at both national and county levels of government are more likely to integrate gender-responsive budgeting when there is a uniform approach supported by clear directives.64 The Treasury may need to establish a committee or taskforce mandated to create regulations, monitoring tools and guidelines, to be implemented at both levels of government, in order to enhance cooperation and coordination.
- It is imperative that officials are adequately supported in the development and implementation of gender-responsive fiscal policies and budgets. The NGEC’s activities, for example, have been impaired by a lack of adequate resources. It can only carry out its constitutional mandate in an enabling environment. Funding must follow functions.
55 Research interviews, 2018.
56 Ibid.
57 Research interviews, 2017–18.
58 Gender statements originated in Australia, where between 1983 and 2013 the federal, state and territory governments analysed budgets and their effects on women and girls. The Australian approach increased international awareness of, and attention to, the importance of gender-responsive budgeting as a tool for enhancing gender equality. The Office of the Status of Women, a federal-level body, spearheaded initiatives that required government agencies to scrutinize all their programmes for their impact on girls and women. This approach, which focuses on addressing gender inequality through better fiscal policies and resource allocation, has been linked to improved conditions for women and girls in Australia. Since 2011, however, Australia’s approach to gender-responsive budgeting has weakened, which has in turn led to the country performing poorly in terms of gender metrics compared to other OECD countries.
59 Research interviews, 2017–18.
60 South Africa spearheaded gender-responsive budgeting. The Women’s Budget Initiative was established in 1995, after the adoption of the post-apartheid constitution, with significant support from a coalition of parliamentary committees and two non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The former collected and collated information and carried out a social audit of budgetary processes. The parliamentarians also provided political and official support for the (radical) recommendations made by the NGOs. A further initiative was introduced in 1998 by South Africa’s Ministry of Finance, with the technical support of organizations that had worked on the first collaboration between parliament and civil society. Overall, the successful introduction of fiscal policy and programme changes at various levels of government – including the child support grant for primary caregivers – has been attributed to the initiatives of 1995 and 1998. Though gender-responsive budgeting has had a lower profile in recent years, the initial efforts mentioned above did lead to some effective fiscal and policy changes addressing gender inequality.
61 Research interviews, 2017–18.
62 In Rwanda, the Ministry of Finance has championed the mainstreaming of gender-responsive budgeting in all ministries, departments and programmes. It published guidelines for gender-responsive budgeting in 2008. The country’s Gender Monitoring Office also implemented gender-responsive budgeting at the local level, enabling it to track successes and implementation challenges. See Stotsky, J. G., Kolovich, L. and Kebhaj, S. (2016), Sub-Saharan Africa: A Survey of Gender Budgeting Efforts, IMF Working Paper WP/16/152, Washington, DC: IMF, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16152.pdf; and Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning of Rwanda (2008), ‘Gender budgeting Guidelines’, http://www.migeprof.gov.rw/fileadmin/_migrated/content_uploads/GENDER_BUDGETING_GUIDELINES-2.pdf.
63 Article 225 of the constitution and Section 12 of the Public Finance Management Act, 2012.
64 Research interviews, 2017–18.