Africa  needs to mainstream women for economic empowerment – AfDB 

The African Development Bank, AfDB has made a case for gender mainstreaming, as part of efforts towards enhancing accountability, transparency and curbing corruption and illicit financial flows in Africa.

One of the graduates of the AFdB’s Public Finance Management in Africa Executive Training on Enhancing Accountability, Transparency, and Curbing Corruption and Illicit Financial Flows in Africa, Isaac Kurasha of the  National Treasury South Africa made this call during his valendatory speech in Abuja on Wednesday.

Kurasha said, “to complement the public finance management training, good planning and performance 

monitoring is key. 

“In a number of countries, these are still not compatible. Furthermore, gender mainstreaming requires attention especially with respect to women economy empowerment and so is climate change and its financing. 

“I believe we need more capacity in these areas. I hope the African Development Institute is looking into these subject areas for capacitation too.”

While commending the bank for organizing the training, Kurasha said the programme has enriched his knowledge across the public financial management cycle. 

“Being in Public Finance, I am just but in one component of the cycle. Prior to this training, I had basic understanding of the other components that make up the PFM cycle. “Today, I am more knowledgeable. The assignments that you gave us at the end of each module drove me to dig deeper into each subject matter.

” I made more friends with people from the other divisions, I consulted more as I was gathering information for my assignments. “Today, I now understand how my roles in Public Finance link to my colleagues’ roles in Tax Policy, Economic Policy, Asset and Liability Management, Procurement, Public Private Partnership units, among others.”

He added, “I now understand why our National Treasury is structured the way it is. Its structure resembles the public financial management cycle!. “

Kurasha added, “as we graduate today, I encourage each of us to go and put into practice the knowledge we have gained from this training programme. Throughout the training programme, we contemplated lack of implementation of actions as one of the weaknesses in our jurisdictions. 

“From this cohort, we should be the game changers. Let us go and influence implementation. No matter the positions we hold, lets go and influence change.

“No matter the division or unit you work in, go share the knowledge with fellow workmates in the  other divisions, ask them whether they are doing anything on the issues that we learnt  over the last 22 months. If not, ask how about this. 

“I hope one day the African Development Bank will call us back to share the progress we have made. I look forward to this day to hear the positive contributions we would have made to our countries and Societies.

“To complement the public finance management training, good planning and performance 

monitoring is key. In a number of countries, these are still not compatible.”

By Jimoh Babatunde 

https://www.vanguardngr.com/2023/12/africa-needs-to-mainstream-women-for-economic-empowerment-afdb/