DAKAR, Senegal (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Rural wo-men across West Africa marched March 8 to demand equal land rights to mark International Women’s Day as activists urge African nations to invest in female farmers.
Women in the region lack secure access to land and find their rights under threat because land laws are limited and often ignored, said organizations such as Oxfam, ActionAid and the ONE campaign.
Female farmers and agriculture workers are widely unaware of such laws, are outnumbered in local committees and positions of power and are absent from key decisions, the organizations said.
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Women in Senegal know how to apply for land ownership, but only group applications are accepted and only a small percentage of the requests are granted, according to the Prospective Agricultural and Rural Initiative.
“Since women are underrepresented in local decision making, they find themselves doubly disadvantaged,” said Cheikh Omar Ba, a representative for the think-tank IPAR in Dakar.
Women are demanding their land rights in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mauritania and Niger in the “My land, my life” campaign, four years after International Women’s Day was dedicated to empowering rural women and ending poverty and hunger.
Women make up more than half of the agricultural workforce in sub-Saharan Africa, yet fewer than one in five own farms, according to the United Nations World Food Programme.
“If women farmers had the same means and facilities as their male counterparts, they could increase crop yields by 20 to 30 percent and help prevent millions of people from starving,” said Kafui Kuwonu from Women in Law and Development in Africa.
The organizations called on West African nations to enforce land laws and enact reforms to give women fair representation in decision making, protect them from land grabs and ensure they have the means to access and secure land.
