Alex Farley- Kiwanuka

Being serious about WEE requires funders to be serious about transparency

By Alex Farley- Kiwanuka and Sally Paxton | Jan 13, 2023 | Blog

The political support for investing in women’s economic empowerment (WEE) has never been higher. Especially in light of the disparate impacts from COVID-19 on women and girls, there has been a loud chorus of voices on the need to invest in WEE. The critical question, though, is whether the political rhetoric is matched by effective, catalytic investments that are significantly advancing women and girls’ equality and giving them the meaningful ability to participate in, and benefit from, economic opportunities and prosperity?

Your step by step guide to researching funding for women’s economic empowerment and women’s financial inclusion

By Alex Farley- Kiwanuka and Sally Paxton | Nov 2, 2022 | Blog, News

We’ve produced two new guides for anyone wishing to track international funding for women’s economic empowerment (WEE) or women’s financial inclusion (WFI) in their own country. The guides are based on an approach we’ve developed and tested over the last two years, which is designed so that it can be used and adapted by decision makers, researchers and advocates for their own purposes – including holding funders accountable or advocating for different investments. The new step by step guides are concise, accessible and flexible – signposting to a range of other, more detailed resources.

New systems needed to track funding for gender equality in Ethiopia

By Alex Farley- Kiwanuka | Sep 29, 2022 | News

A new study has concluded that it is not currently possible to track national funding for women’s economic empowerment in Ethiopia, and calls on the government to require public bodies to collect and report gender-disaggregated data for the projects they implement. The study was conducted by Three B Consult and commissioned by Publish What You Fund.

More funding is being directed to gender and equity programmes in Uganda, but where exactly is the money going?

By Alex Farley- Kiwanuka | Sep 28, 2022 | News

Our new assessment of national funding for women’s economic empowerment (WEE) in Uganda has highlighted an increase in resources allocated to gender and equity programmes over the last five years (2015/16 – 2020/21). However, allocations for WEE remain generally low, the released funds are often less than what has been approved, and the utilised funds less than what has been released. The study, conducted by the Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG) and commissioned by Publish What You Fund, also found that a lack of disaggregated data means that the support targeted at women and girls is likely to be lower than the estimates suggest.

Better funding approaches are needed to advance women’s economic empowerment in Pakistan

By Alex Farley- Kiwanuka | Sep 27, 2022 | News

Our new study, conducted by Omar Asghar Khan Foundation and commissioned by Publish What You Fund, tracked funding for women’s economic empowerment in Pakistan. It identified 1,674 projects supported by the federal and provincial governments. These had a combined expenditure of Rs.132 billion.

Mapping empowerment – using giant datasets to track investments in women’s economic empowerment

By Alex Farley- Kiwanuka | Jun 8, 2022 | Blog

In the run up to the launch of the 2022 Aid Transparency Index, Alex Farley-Kiwanuka explains the monumental effort undertaken by her team to combine four global datasets in order to track Women’s Economic Empowerment funding across three countries. Alex also shares why she feels the Aid Transparency Index is so important for maintaining and improving international funding data and making it useable for researchers like herself.