Uganda's Gender and Equity Certificate — Mandatory Compliance Scoring for the National Budget

Uganda's Public Finance Management Act (2015) requires every ministry, department, agency (MDA) and local government to demonstrate that its Budget Framework Paper and Ministerial Policy Statement address gender and equity issues before the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development will approve it. The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), a constitutional body, assesses each institution's plans against a standardised checklist and issues a Gender and Equity Certificate to those scoring at least 50%; the first certificates were issued for FY2017/18 after 79 sectors met the threshold.
Institutionalisation has grown steadily: for FY2026/27, all 149 Ministerial Policy Statements assessed reached the 50% qualifying score, and national average compliance rose from 68% to 70% year-on-year, according to the EOC's own assessment reports. The certificate has also been extended to local governments, with EOC now routinely assessing district and municipal budgets alongside central government votes.
The mechanism has limits: a 50% pass threshold is a low bar, EOC scoring focuses on process compliance (whether gender and equity data appear in planning documents) rather than verified downstream outcomes for women and marginalised groups, and independent Ugandan media have reported that some entities still risk being excluded from the budget process over compliance gaps. It nonetheless remains one of the most systematically documented, government-run mandatory gender-budgeting compliance regimes in Africa.

Read the full analysis: https://www.eoc.go.ug/