East African Gender Budget Sub Regional Conference, June 17 - 21, 2002

Organizers: Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) with assistance from UNDP

Conference Background
Forum for Women in democracy (FOWODE) with the assistance from UNDP is organising a gender budget sub regional conference. This conference is the last activity of our grassroots women leaders project. Other activities done under this project include gender budget training workshop, gender advocacy training workshop and the gender budget advocacy campaign workshop. This is a five-day conference and is scheduled to take place in June 2002.

Conference Theme:
"Investing In Women: Towards Gender Responsive Budgeting"

Rationale for this conference:
To share countries experiences of gender budget initiatives in the eastern sub region of Africa and further advocate for gender equity in budgets.

Immediate objectives:

1. To increase awareness about the concept and deepen understanding of gender budgeting.
2. To assess the progress made in specific countries
3. To explore ways in which gender budgeting can be used as a tool to engender macroeconomic policy, MTEF, and public expenditure review to monitor implementation of poverty eradication strategies
4. Document and disseminate countries experiences in gender budgeting.

Expected output:

1. Sharing of conceptual frameworks, research methods and advocacy strategies used in various genders budget initiatives.
2. Formation of an informal network of gender-responsive budget activists to collaborate continuously
3. A report of specific country experiences highlights successful strategies and lessons learnt.

Target group:
Representatives of civil society organisations that are interested in economic policy and budget analysis and advocacy and in particular gender budgeting will attend the conference. Government officials involved in gender budget initiatives, representative of intergovernmental bodies involved in gender and economic policy analysis and advocacy such as United nations Economic Commission on Africa (UNECA), East Africa Community (EAC), Intergovernmental Development Authority (IGAD) and Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) gender units will also be invited. Donors who are interested in funding gender budget programmes activities will be encouraged to participate.

Conference activities:
The conference will have sessions on the following areas:

1. Keynote address on 'macroeconomics and gender- Teach In' session.
   
   
2. Technical papers to be presented
   • Gender Poverty reduction and Economic growth - the linkages
   • A gender analysis of macroeconomic polices in sub-Saharan Africa
   • Gender budgeting: tools and techniques
   • Gender budgeting at the local government level
   • Gender and revenue analysis United Kingdom experience
   • Challenges of integrating gender budgeting techniques into the national budget cycle
   
   
   
3. Two training workshops
   • Gender and Macroeconomic teach in
   • Gender and trade
   
   
   
4. Three papers on countries experiences in implementing gender budget initiatives
   • Tanzania experience in gender budgeting
   • Uganda's experience in gender budgeting
   • Kenya's experience in gender budgeting.
   
   
   
5. Two workshops to discuss and concretise the presentations made
   
   
6. Countries invited
   • Host Uganda
   • Ethiopia
   • Rwanda
   • Kenya
   • Tanzania

Contact information

Mukunda Julius Mugisha
Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE)
P.O. Box 7176
Kampala, Uganda
Telephone: 256-41-540241/2
Fax: 256-41-540243
E-mail: fowode@utlonline.co.ug

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Last update: June-17, 2002