More Needs to be done to Help African Women have Access to Land

Women in Africa have limited participation in the decision-making process preceding alienation of land from their communities.

Lack of formal land rights and their subordinate role in the household and community leaders to the marginalization of women in decision-making processes and the bypassing of them in the distribution of compensation and the planning and implementation of resettlement.

As soil degradation, climate change and population growth place enormous strains on land that sustains millions of people, multinational companies are also gunning for large chunks of land.

Caught between these pressures, many poor, rural communities get displaced or choose to sell their collectively held land. It’s often women who suffer the most.

Despite constitutional commitments to gender equality, Some African governments are not protecting poor, rural women from harmful commercial land deals. State officials’ failure to close gaps in land laws and overhaul ineffective regulations shortchanges women, who receive little to no payment for their families’ land. Governments’ attempts to amplify their voices in community land decision-making are also falling short.

Gender-neutral language, in particular, unintentionally discriminates against women by requiring companies to distribute compensation at the household level. Because men traditionally act as the head of the household in both countries, they alone can submit claims and collect payments on behalf of their families.

According to a report by the World Resource Institute (WRI), Women tend to struggle more than men to rebuild their lives and livelihoods after being displaced or resettled by companies.

According to the report, investments in agribusiness, mining, or logging have resulted in the loss of land and displacement of local communities, loss of livelihoods, and loss of communal assets—and the effects are worse for women than for men.

When communities move, women often lose access to communal natural resources even as they remain responsible for collecting water, firewood, fodder and medicinal plants for their families in the process of resettlement. Tenuous access to these resources can increase women’s workloads, threaten household food security and expose them to harassment.