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Tuesday, April 02, 2019 12:.00PM / AFDB
Creating space for more women in the African procurement market was at
the heart of a technical workshop organised last Thursday and Friday by the
African Development Bank.
The Bank is spearheading gender mainstreaming actions in procurement on
the African continent. It held a technical workshop in Johannesburg, South
Africa, which agreed an action plan on implementing targets for the achievement
of gender equality in Africa’s procurement sector and in the delivery of vital
goods and services.
The two main objectives of the workshop were to bring senior policy
makers together with business and civil society representatives to set the
course for gender mainstreaming in
public procurement in Africa and to share good practice and lessons learned
from the experience of affirmative procurement measures.
The global procurement market is highly lucrative, and public
procurement accounts for 10-15% of gross domestic product in developed
countries and 30% in developing countries. With such significant amounts
disbursed in the sector, public procurement is now considered a powerful means
of achieving socio-economic objectives. However, women-owned businesses face
disproportionately more challenges and have less access to funds in public
procurement.
The Bank’s workshop addressed the disproportionate representation of
women and the challenges women face in the African procurement sector and some
of the solutions already proposed by some governments to fill the gap.
“In 2013, the Kenyan Government helped women’s enterprises and other
disadvantaged groups by implementing a legal requirement that 30% of Government
procurement spend should be set aside
specifically for enterprises owned by women, youth and the disabled. This has
provided women with more opportunities to do business with public entities at
the national and country levels of government” said Mr. Maurice Juma, Director
General of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority of Kenya.
Multilateral development banks (MDBs), like governments, spend large
sums of money on procurement and have realised in the last few years that
procurement not only has a fiduciary but also a strategic function, which can
be used to promote gender equality in public procurement in their member
countries.
As part of their role in gender mainstreaming in the procurement sector,
MDBs have various tools at their disposal, such as project procurement, which
entails incorporating conditions within the financing agreements and capacity
building by supporting member countries to implement affirmative procurement
frameworks, and support training for government agencies and women
entrepreneurs.
“The Bank financed Chinsali-Nakonde Road Rehabilitation Project in
Zambia, included an intervention to train women contractors for possible
participation in routine road maintenance. Preparing women through capacity
building ensured their participation in road construction programmes such as
the Zambia Link 8000, L-400 and Pave Zambia 2000, proving the value of the
Bank’s support” said a Bank representative.
The organisation of the workshop as well as the action plan developed
during the workshop sessions form part of the Bank’s contribution to the
efforts of the Multilateral Development Bank Working Group on Gender for the
inclusion of more women in the procurement sector.
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