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Good practice Imported

Sierra Leone's Gender Budget Statement — Piloting Gender-Responsive Budgeting Across Government

Sierra Leone · Freetown · See the Sierra Leone profile · See the Freetown profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 72% 48/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Sierra Leone's Ministry of Finance began tagging budget lines by gender impact in FY2024, piloting Gender-Responsive Budgeting in 5 ministries under the 2023 GEWE Act; by FY2026 expanded to 10, though independent reporting says spending is still not gender-disaggregated.

5 -> 10
MDAs covered by the pilot (FY2024-FY2026)
25 USD million
Estimated annual foregone revenue from structural gender barriers
Sierra Leone's Gender Budget Statement — Piloting Gender-Responsive Budgeting Across Government

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Ministry of Finance, Sierra Leone; Ministry of Gender and Children's Affairs
Period
2024–present
Keywords
public financial management, gender budgeting, public administration

Context

Since fiscal year 2024, Sierra Leone's Ministry of Finance has published an annual Gender Budget Statement alongside the national budget, piloting Gender-Responsive Budgeting (GRB) in five ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), anchored in the Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (GEWE) Act, 2023, with UN Women technical support.

Results

By the FY2026 budget cycle the pilot had expanded to ten MDAs. The IMF's 2024 Article IV consultation explicitly recommended continuing the gender-budgeting rollout, citing UNDP estimates that structural barriers to women's land, property and finance access cost the economy roughly US$25 million a year in foregone revenue.

Conclusions

Independent Sierra Leonean reporting is more cautious: a Politico SL analysis found that flagship programmes such as 'Feed Salone' still carry no gender-disaggregated targets, describing gender budgeting as 'the missing link' rather than a mainstreamed practice. No independent evaluation of whether the tagged budget lines have changed actual ministry spending or outcomes has yet been published.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Technical assistance via UN Women; no separate pilot budget published.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — FY2024 pilot (5 MDAs) expanded to FY2026 (10 MDAs).
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Finance budget staff, Ministry of Gender and Children's Affairs, UN Women technical advisors

Conditions for success

  • legal anchor via the GEWE Act 2023
  • annual public Gender Budget Statement

Common failure modes

  • flagship programmes still lack gender-disaggregated targets

Where it fits

Governance type
national government
Scale
national
Income level
low-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Replication kit

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Data sources

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