Former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has revealed how the administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan created 10,000 jobs through a special entrepreneurship programme for Nigerian women.
Addressing Finance
Ministers from across the world on the topic, “Why Should Finance Ministers
Care About Gender Equality,” she stated that lawmakers booed Jonathan for
supporting the gender equality bill.
She said, “How over
the last two years did this come about, you many wonder.
“The idea first came
to me in 2013, when I became Nigeria’s minister of finance for a second time. I
had grown tired, quite candidly, of the phrase gender mainstreaming.
“It wasn’t getting us
anywhere fast enough. Yet here I was, minister of finance, with so many tools
at my disposal, what excuse could I give for not moving forward on this? So I
sat down with my team and asked, ‘What can we do? What incentives can we offer
through the budget, that’s the big tool we have that would really empower women
and move us toward gender equality?’ It took us some time, but we realised we
had this powerful instrument and we needed to use it.
“The president was
supportive. We came up with the idea to work with the World Bank Group and the
UK aid agency, DFID. And we designed a system whereby, through the budget, if a
ministry delivered certain additional results for girls and women over and
above its targets it would receive additional budget as an incentive.
“We offered this to
the cabinet on a voluntary basis and five ministries initially signed up:
agriculture, health, water, communication technology, and public works. The
ministry of women’s affairs agreed to monitor and evaluate progress, and our
colleagues, partners, and the donor community agreed to support our initiative.
“When the president
announced it in parliament, he was booed by male parliamentarians and cheered
by female MPs, but it passed. It stayed in the budget and achieved excellent
results
“We developed a
program for women entrepreneurs. A World Bank team supported us, and again we
achieved spectacular results. We used a portion of the budget to incentivize
young entrepreneurs, 40 and younger, who would register their businesses, get
peer learning and mentoring, and a grant if they won a business planning
competition.
“In the first round,
only 17 percent of the applicants were women. But more than 50 percent of small
and medium-sized firms in Nigeria are run by women. So we held a second round
just for women, setting aside about US$8 million dollars. About 64,000 thousand
people applied. We ultimately selected 1,200 women to receive grants of
US$10,000 to US$90,000—and they created about 10,000 new jobs.”
Okonjo-Iweala further
stated that the programmes initiated during the immediate past administration
are helping women and men at the grass-roots.
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