Capacity Strengthening Of Smallholder Women Farmers In Niger State For Monitoring Of Budgets And Services

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has trained core teams of smallholder women farmers in Niger State on how to monitor agricultural budgets and services.

CSJ is providing technical support to the Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON) to strengthen the campaign for improved access to agriculture equipment and inputs for these women farmers with funding support from the International Budget Partnership.

The project is designed to advocate for the implementation of favorable agriculture policies and budgets that meet the needs of small holder farmers and to influence government national budget priorities to the agricultural sector.

The training in Niger State entailed an understanding and engagement of the budget process through planning, implementation and audit. Stakeholders to be engaged at each stage of the budget cycle were listed as well as the strategies for engagement, including reviews, analysis, memoranda, and recommendations, print, electronic and social media articles among other things.

The goals and objectives of each stage of the budget process were clearly explained to the smallholder women farmers. Training modules were produced based on identified capacity profiles of the smallholder women farmers. The women farmers were taught the role of plans and policies as the basis for designing annual budgets. The goals and objectives of each stage of the budget cycle was also established.

CSJ designed a template for monitoring of budgets and services, and explained the template to the women farmers in great detail. The women understood the template and gained mastery of how to deploy the template for monitoring of budget and services.

They were also taught how to deploy the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act to collect information from government agencies.