Cash transfers, health insurance, school canteens, free schooling for girls: the 2027 draft finance bill allocates 45% of the general budget to socially sensitive spending. For a modest family, these abstract words have faces, schedules, and cooking smells.
It is 6:30 AM. Rachida has already swept the courtyard, put water on to heat, and woken up the three youngest children. The eldest is still sleeping: she only has class at 10 AM.
“Morning is a rush,” she says, braiding the youngest girl’s hair, who is sitting between her knees. “Before, the big question was: what are they going to eat at noon? Now, at least for the little ones, I know.”
The little ones eat at the neighborhood primary school canteen. A hot meal, every school day. For Rachida, a widow who sells beignets in front of the market, it is one less expense and one less worry. That is no small thing.
1.9 million plates
Her children are part of a group set to expand. The 2027 draft finance bill plans to increase the number of schoolchildren benefiting from school canteens from 1.4 to 1.9 million starting this 2026-2027 school year, with a budget of just over 40 billion FCFA.
An extra half-million children who will not return home with empty stomachs at noon. Teachers have been repeating it for a long time: it is hard to learn when you are hungry.
A name on a register
Two years ago, an agent came through the neighborhood, form in hand. Questions about the number of children, income, the house. Rachida did not really understand what it was for. Today, she knows: her household is registered in the Single Social Register, the database that allows the State to know precisely whom to help.
The 2027 budget consolidates this file. It also provides for 35 integrated socio-economic and digital centers, equipped with one-stop social protection desks, in 26 communes, from Kandi to Cotonou. The idea: so that a mother no longer has to run from one office to another to assert her rights.
It is through this register that Gbessoke operates, the cash transfer program aimed at households in extreme poverty, to enable them to start an income-generating activity. The text provides for its intensification. Rachida dreams of a second stove, an ice chest, and being able to sell cold water in addition to beignets.
“If they give me a little boost, I know what to do with it. I am not going to eat the money.”
“The hospital was the last door”
Last year, her youngest son had severe malaria. She talks about the night, the fever, the rush. And the fear of the prescription, even stronger than that of the illness.
This is undoubtedly where the 2027 budget hits closest to home. Generalization of health insurance through ARCH, a basket of free care, systematic handling of vital emergencies, free distribution of mosquito nets. Ten new zone hospitals, with 65 and 120 beds, are also scheduled to be built.
“Before, we went to the hospital when there was no other solution. Because we knew we were going to leave everything we had there. If we know that in an emergency we will be treated first, that changes everything. We will go earlier.”
Her eldest daughter, fifteen, is in the third year of middle school. Rachida wanted to keep her at home next year, to help with the business. The calculation was simple: she could not afford the upper secondary school fees for two children.
Free schooling for girls in secondary, technical, and vocational education changed the calculation. The young girl will continue. She wants to become a nurse or a midwife. She is still hesitating.
Rachida watches her walk away toward the middle school, bag on her shoulder.
“I didn’t have that chance. She is going to have it.”
What she is still waiting for
Not everything is resolved, far from it. The price of corn, rent, electricity. Rachida has no illusions about the speed at which announcements reach her courtyard.
But she now knows a few words: the register, the canteen, insurance. Words that, not long ago, did not concern her.
Leaving no one by the wayside… She repeats the campaign slogan, somewhat mockingly, then more seriously. “We’ll see. For now, they’ve taken the children into the car. That’s already something.”
- Governance
