Disability inclusion in Western Kenya: Key findings from county budget data
This series of publications tracks the disability inclusivity of budgets in five counties in Kenya across five financial years.
This series of publications forms part of Development Initiatives’ (DI’s) work on data to support disability inclusion. Working as part of the Inclusive Futures consortium, DI reviewed the budgets of five counties in Kenya – Bungoma, Busia, Kakamega, Trans Nzoia and Vihiga – from financial year (FY) 2016–17 to FY2020–21 to investigate disability inclusion in the regions. The key findings from the five county briefings, as well as a background overview and legislative and policy contexts, are presented in a synthesis report.
Key findings from the analysis include:
- All five counties spent, on average, 0.1% of their total budgets on disability inclusion
- Across all five counties, budget lines specifically targeted to supporting persons with disabilities were low in number and were not consistently allocated funding across the period under review
- County government departments focusing on gender, culture, youth, sports and social services received the bulk of the disability budget in all five counties
- Vihiga county, which had the highest reported disability prevalence rate of all five counties, spent the most on disability inclusion and its budget had more budget lines specifically related to disability inclusion than any of the other counties.
Key recommendations for county governments and disabled persons organisations (DPOs) include:
- Build knowledge of county planning and budgeting processes and cycles among persons with disabilities and their representative DPOs
- Build knowledge of disability-inclusive legislation, planning, budgeting and implementation processes and appropriate language to use with persons with disabilities among all county departments (including the governor, county executive officials and members of county assemblies)
- Carry out continuous disability-inclusive reviews of development plans and budgets to improve accountability and ensure inclusion
- Develop a disability policy or review existing policies to ensure they are disability inclusive.
Each briefing:
- Identifies the key challenges to analysis, such as lack of disaggregated data and unavailability of budget reports for some FYs
- Summarises the critical funding gaps uncovered by the review
- Concludes with a list of recommendations for county governments and DPOs, focused on increasing disability inclusivity and improving availability of budget data for future analysis.
Read the county briefings and synthesis report.
These briefings and the synthesis report have been funded with UK aid from the UK government, and were developed with the support of the Inclusive Futures consortium. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the UK government or other members of the Inclusive Futures consortium.
The Inclusive Futures programme is made up of disability and development specialists and global disability leaders from 16 organisations, coming together under one initiative funded by UK aid from the UK government. Its goal is to ensure opportunities for persons with disabilities and a future that’s disability inclusive.
The briefings also benefit from the insights of partners including United Disabled Persons of Kenya (UDPK) and the Western Disability Network.
Photo caption: As part of Inclusive Futures, the Sightsavers team held advocacy training sessions with local and national DPOs in December 2019.
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