FNT/EOI/39/2024- Consultancy Global Debt Architecture and Gendered taxes 2024

1. About FEMNET

The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) is a pan-African, feminist and membership-based network based in Nairobi, Kenya, with over 800 individual and institutional members across 50 African countries and in the diaspora. FEMNET envisions a society where African women and girls thrive in dignity and well-being, free from patriarchal and neoliberal oppression and injustices. FEMNET recognises that the commitment to alter relations of power, structural inequities, and systemic oppression lies at the heart of feminism. FEMNET is therefore committed to pushing towards changing power structures that perpetuate gender inequality by nurturing the African women’s movement to enable women and girls in their diversity to effectively claim, affirm, and use their collective power to end all forms of exclusion, oppression, exploitation, and injustices against them.

Founded in 1988, FEMNET exists to facilitate and coordinate the sharing of experiences, information, and strategies for human rights promotion among feminists, activists and women’s rights organisations as a strategy for collective organising; policy influencing & advocacy; strategic communication; capacity strengthening as well as feminist solidarity and movement building. Over the years, FEMNET has strategically positioned herself as a convener, organiser and facilitator of critical dialogues around women’s economic justice and rights; transformative women’s leadership; sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR); climate justice and natural resource governance as well as, ending all forms of violence and harmful/ discriminatory practices against women and girls.

FEMNET continues to intentionally influence decisions made at national, regional and global levels, constantly ensuring African women’s voices are amplified and their needs, priorities and aspirations are prioritised in key policy dialogues and outcomes that have a direct and indirect impact on their lives. FEMNET mobilises African women to hold their States accountable to women’s rights and gender equality commitments.

As part of the efforts to effectively influence decisions made at national, regional and global level, it is important that African Women and Girls are equipped with evidence to back up their advocacy. More still, it is important that this evidence and analysis is shared with policy makers to inform their decisions and ensure that the fiscal policies adopted are gender transformative. In this regards FEMNET would like to commission a paper on “The Global Debt Architecture and Gendered taxes: Pan-African feminist Perspectives on Financing Africa’s Development.”

2. Background and rationale.

Over the years, African countries have continued to register low tax collections while at the same accumulating high debt amounts. This has been at the heart of discussions on financing for Africa’s development that have continued to spur attention within and outside the continent. African countries have continued to fall short of their revenue collection targets with majority of them collecting tax amounting to only 15.6% of GDP. To fill the financing gap, majority of them have had to resort to debt with African countries owing over US$655.6 billion to external creditors as of 2022 which amounts to 22.8% of their collective 2022 GDP. As a result debt service in equals combined total spending on education, health, social protection and climate, and exceeds it by 50% in Africa. It is 2.5 times education spending, 4 times health spending, and 11 times social protection spending. This reflects an austerity move taken by African governments taken by African countries to cut back spending on critical sectors to pay off debt. More still, as a strategy to raise additional revenue, African countries have continued to rely heavily on regressive taxes such as Value Added Tax (VAT) which is also imposed on the most basic goods and accounts for an average of 27.8% of the total tax revenue within African countries. This situation creates a vicious cycle as African countries continue to realize fast growing debt burdens- with a number of them in or near debt distress, hence unable to finance the most critical needs of its people. Many countries frequently rely on statistics that quantify labour revenue and state fiscal aspects such as taxes to evaluate the fiscal cost of care. However, this, as history has shown, prevents the states from recognizing the societal benefits of investing in care.

Regressive tax policies have the potential to further entrench gender inequalities and compromise women’s rights more significantly. The campaign for tax justice is crucial in the continual obstacles that African women and girls confront, such as inadequate access to high-quality public services like healthcare, education, and social protection systems. Nevertheless, women still encounter many hurdles that prevent their inclusion in public life, particularly when it comes to participating in decision-making processes regarding tax policies. This has led to women facing challenges in accessing economic resources and has resulted in gender biases within tax systems that fail to consider women’s real-life experiences. It is crucial to establish a clear political stance that can serve as the foundation for African feminist endeavours in the realm of tax justice. This should be based on feminist and gendered theory, guided by African feminist principles, and reflective of the lived experiences of women.

More recently, strides have been made to improve the global financial architecture. The ongoing process to develop a framework for the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation is key to providing a democratic, transparent, and inclusive space in the design of international tax rules, thereby protecting the taxing rights of African countries. With CSOs actively engaging in the process, the convention could be one step towards ensuring tax systems that consider the human rights of women and girls and pay attention to gender.

A democratic, transparent, and inclusive global financial architecture is essential for establishing progressive and gender-transformative fiscal systems that address the needs of women and girls, thereby accelerating the achievement of gender equality worldwide. However, with a financial architecture that is entrenched in colonial legacies and established in the absence of African countries, it is evident that that the failed financing system of African countries is a systemic, structural and endemic feature of the global order. It is thus important that African countries take steps to review their current tax and debt policies. This will be critical towards ensuring that there are sufficient resources directed towards investing in critical sectors and thus meeting the most urgent needs of women and girls in Africa.

It is upon this background this background that FEMNET would like to commission a paper on a comprehensive analysis of the correlation between the debt architecture, tax policy and gender equality, examining the impact on social reproduction and resource distribution. This analysis will delve into both inadvertent and visible gender inequalities, as well as propose feminist recommendations building on the current feminist movement tax justice advocacy demands.

3. Objectives of the consultancy and scope of work.

The study will be aimed at providing a historical analysis on the link between the status of tax and debt in Africa, the gendered impact of the current tax and debt policies, and further provide recommendations to improve the status tax and debt in Africa.

Specific objectives of the study

• To explore the link between debt architecture, tax policy and gender equality from a Pan African feminist perspective
• Assess the gendered impact of the debt architecture and tax policy on social reproduction and resource distribution.
• Provide Pan African feminist recommendations for consideration by African Governments, International Financial Institutions (IFIs), CSOs and WROs to create gender transformative fiscal systems.

4. Deliverables & expected results

• A research paper on the Global Debt Architecture and Gendered taxes: Pan-African feminist Perspectives on Financing Africa’s Development

5.Required Qualification, Skills and Competencies

Academic Qualifications
Academic qualifications in gender studies, law, public policy, public finance, economics, or related fields, preferably with post-graduate degree.

Experience, skills, and competencies.

• Experience in conducting macro-economic feminist analysis with a Pan-African feminist approach.
• Proven experience developing papers and policy briefs that have a focus on women and girls.
• Experience in drafting advocacy messages that are robust and compelling to the target audience and specifically to policy makers.
• Experience working for non-profit organizations including Women Rights Organizations and feminist organisations.
• Demonstration of dedication to the advancement of Africa as a continent and belief in the tenets of the Pan African feminist charter.

6.Duration of Assignment.

This is a 25-day assignment from 16th September 2024- 21st October 2024

7.Liaison, Coordination and Reporting.

The consultant will report to the Economic Justice and Rights Programme Lead.

8.Selection of Consultant.

FEMNET shall contract the consultant. The contract will include a Withholding Tax (WHT) deduction in line with the contracting laws where FEMNET is headquartered. A WHT certificate will be issued to the consultant. Payment will be made through bank transfer to the consultant’s bank account, and FEMNET will not meet the costs of bank charges. The payment schedule will be agreed upon with the consultant upon successful selection.

9.Intellectual Property Rights.

The consultant expressly assigns to FEMNET any copyright arising from the outputs produced while executing the service contract. The consultant may not use, reproduce, disseminate, or authorize others to use, reproduce or disseminate any work produced under the service contract without prior consent from FEMNET.

10.Terms of Service.

This is a non-staff contract; therefore, the consultant is not entitled to insurance, medical cover, or other status or conditions as FEMNET staff.