How Sensitive is the National Development Plan (NDP II) in Addressing Gender Issues?

As part of the implementation of the Uganda Vision 2040 and in line with the Comprehensive National Development Planning Framework (CNDPF), government of Uganda under the guidance of National Planning Authority (NPA) is in its final leg of developing the 2^nd National Development Plan (NDPII) 2015-2020 to be presented to cabinet for adoption. The theme for this plan is “Strengthening Uganda’s competiveness’s for sustainable wealth creation, employment and inclusive growth”.

The main goal of the NDPII is to attain middle income status by 2020 for which four strategic objectives have been set namely; Increase Sustainable Production, Productivity  and Value Addition in  Key Growth Opportunities, Increase the Stock and Quality of Strategic Infrastructure to Accelerate  the Country’s Competitiveness, Enhance Human Capital Development and Strengthen Mechanisms for Quality, Effectiveness and Efficient Service Delivery.

The NDPI sighted gender inequality as one of the binding constraints hindering Uganda’s development and socio-economic transformation that needed to be tackled ardently. However during the implementation of the NDPI t has reoccurred in the NDPII that gender inequality still needs to be addressed. The NDPII stresses that there was limited integration of gender issues in sectoral plans, programmes and projects. These implementation challenges were due to lack of synergies and coherence across sectors and local governments on what priorities to take on.

This however does not go to say that some gains were not achieved in regard to redressing the gender imbalances in the country during the NDPI period. Government is committed to addressing the gender inequality gap and it is for this reason that NPA thought it imperative to engage gender experts in the design and crafting of the plan to ensure that the plan addressed these challenges and interventions are adequately articulated in the NDPII for implementation for the next five years. We should also acknowledge that NPA assumed a multi-stakeholder approach that was consultative and included sections of government, CSOs, the private sector etc who contributed to this process.

FOWODE, a women’s rights organization was also one of the key contributors to the NDPII development process not only in providing technical recommendations on how to integrate gender issues in the plan but was also involved in the validation exercise of the NDPII from a gender perspective but most importantly concretize and build consensus on the priority inventions for the NDPII.

With questions still lingering on the minds of many Ugandans who have not fully or not engaged in this process in particular those concerned with gender we felt it important to share with Ugandans a snap shot on how the NDPII has tackled these issues this time round.

Priority areas of Investment in the NDPII:

Out of the 9 opportunities identified in the Vision 2040, the NDPII prioritizes investment in three key growth opportunities of: Agriculture, Tourism; and Minerals, Oil and Gas. It has also prioritized two out of the six fundamentals: Infrastructure and Human Capital Development.  In light of the agreed strategic direction for the country’s development agenda, the three prioritized growth opportunities and the two fundamentals for the plan are justified based on the assessment of the situation analysis and achievements of the NDPI and the regional and internationally development context.

Agriculture

This sector is still being regarded as the backbone of the economy and provides the means of livelihoods for most of the population. The sector employs and provides livelihoods to 72 percent of the total labor force (including disguised labor), 77 percent of which are women and has a strong intra-sectoral linkages that make it a basis for the growth of other sectors.

How the Plan has prioritized gender

During the Plan period, focus will be on enhancing agricultural production and productivity of the twelve selected enterprises namely: Cotton, Coffee, Tea, Cassava, Rice, Beans, Fish, Beans, Beef, Milk, Citrus and banana addressing the challenges in the sectoral thematic technical areas including seeds and fertilizers, mechanization and water for agricultural production and strengthening the institutional and enabling environment.

 The gender gap in access to agricultural resources and production will be reduced by enhancing women’s productivity along the value chains of the above selected commodities.

The NDP II  emphasizes that government shall introduce the single spine agricultural system, increase market access and value addition-agro-processing, farmer organization, develop agricultural research, technology development and uptake, promote agriculture mechanism, increase access to high quality seeds and plating materials,  strengthen agriculture institutional capacity-policy management & training institution, set up organized  production and collective marketing including provision  of storage infrastructures, support access to affordable agricultural finance to enable acquisition of production inputs.

Tourism

Tourism interventions are cheaper and more cost-effective and the NDPII acknowledge that the sector has higher and quick return on investment. Tourism has one of Uganda’s leading foreign exchange earners contributing Shs 5,495 billion in FY 2012/13 up from 4, 993.6 billion in FY 2011/12.  The number of jobs directly and indirectly supported by the sector has increased significantly from an estimated 199,500 jobs in FY 2011/12 (3.1% of the total employment to about 483,500 in FY 2012/13 (7.6 percent of the total employment). The sector’s contribution to the GDP is high at 9.0 percent.

How gender will be considered in this sector

It is envisaged that the sector has great potential in generating employment for young women and men in the service sector such as airline companies, tour and travel bureaus, hotels and restaurants.

Minerals, Oil and Gas

Prioritization of minerals, oil and gas in the NDPII is based on the evidence that Uganda has potential to exploit the existing commercial reserves and build a strong mining industry that will enhance domestic revenue, generate employment and support the economic lifeline industries such as construction and agriculture. Minerals prioritized for investment in the next five years include: iron ore, phosphates, limestone, marble, copper, dimension stones. In addition the on-going oil and gas exploitation will be prioritized and accelerated.

This plan in this section is gender blind as interventions proposed are biased to favoring the men who are more involved in this sector due to the technicality of its operation. Given the high illiteracy levels of women, their consideration in key decision making positions in this sector has been highly under rated and exaggerates the gender gap. 

 Investment will focus on geological surveys, acquisition of specialized skills (geo-scientists, engineers, geo-economists, technicians), in research and development and planning for downstream processes to maximize input to the growing manufacturing sector.

Human Capital Development

The NDPII acknowledges that Uganda has a huge human capital constraint which manifests itself in accumulated skills deficit and poor the country’s competiveness in the productive age group. The low education and appropriate skills levels of Uganda’s labor force constrains overall production and productivity. In fact 55% of the total labor force has only primary school education, 16.1 % has no formal education and only 3.1 % has post secondary specialized skills ((UDHS 2011 as quoted in the UBOS Facts and Figures on Gender).

The situation is worse among the females with 78.4 % of Ugandan females aged 15 years and above having acquired basic education or no formal education at all. This is a result of high drop put rates whose survival rates to grade five stands at 59.5 (40% drop out) and 29.5 (70% drop out)percent to grade seven. Worse still, only 63 percent of the girls and 66.7 percent of the boys complete primary seven and transit to senior one.

Human capital development investment will focus on the health, education and skills development.

Key game changer inventions for human capital development that are gender sensitive

Health

Government shall strengthen preventative health care to address the burden of malaria- the leading cause of morbidity and mortality –through mass treatment of malaria; scale up interventions to prevent maternal, neonatal and child, morbidity and, mortality immunization, nutrition, family planning, malaria prevention and management, increase of skilled mid wives, nurses, anaesthists and doctors, set and maintain standards for safe delivery among others.

Education

Emphasis shall be on Early Child Development (ECD) and quality enhancement and retention at primary and secondary levels especially for girls. This is a policy shift to move from emphasizing increasing enrolment rates to refocusing investment to ensuring quality education in schools.  Investment direction shall be on massive training and re-training of teachers, improvement in school feeding, improving literacy and numeracy competences among others.

Skills Development

The plan emphasizes a holistic approach to knowledge and skills development at all levels through curriculum reform.  This will entail among other things consolidating and increasing resources to BTVET functions in an integrated body for skills development and engage in aggressive marketing and public campaign to improve the perceptions, mindset change and attitude to BTVET in the Ugandan society; private sector participation in skills development PPP; training levy etc.

The NDPII also has a window for a Women’s Empowerment programme that will used to promote gender mainstreaming and promote women’s empowerment a pre-requisite for sustainable development.

Conclusively, the NDPII has endeavored to be grafted in a gender sensitive manner and challenge now is on its implementation. Realizing of the NDP outcomes is the responsibility to government and all other stakeholders to create an enabling environment in which gender equality and the empowerment of women is achieved. Emphasis to all MDAs is to place gender mainstreaming top of their agendas and place a gender perspective in their strategies and development plans to achieve the NDPII gender equality outcomes.