By Felix Khanoba
State governments and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) administration have been urged to make land more accessible to women farmers across the country.
The call was made by the Country Director of ActionAid, Andrew Mamedu, during a town hall meeting organized by the Small Scale Women Farmers Organization in Nigeria (SWOFON) on Wednesday in Abuja.
The event brought together stakeholders from various sectors, including FCT officials, community leaders, women farmers, and civil society organizations, to discuss actionable strategies for promoting gender-equitable land tenure systems and empowering women in sustainable agriculture.
Speaking at the event, Mamedu, represented by ActionAid’s Director of Business Development and Innovation, Nkechi Ilochi-Kanny, expressed concern over the persistent challenges women face in accessing land for farming.
He emphasized the need for both government and community leaders to take deliberate steps to ease restrictions on land ownership for women.
“They (government) should make land easily accessible for everyone, and particularly for women, so that women can have access to land. That’s one way. If there are certain conditions that can be sort of relapsed or sort of loosed in terms of women’s access, that should happen,” Mamedu said.
He further encouraged community leaders, who often serve as custodians of communal land, to consider allocating land to women’s cooperatives if individual ownership is not feasible.
“And for the community leaders who, at the community level, are custodians of the community land, they can also begin to think, even if they don’t want to give women as single or maybe women as individual women, they can form into cooperatives and give the land as a cooperative land to the women,” he added.
Mamedu also stressed the importance of economic empowerment for women to enable them to acquire farmland independently.
“But most importantly for me is the fact that women need to have resources. If I’m able to buy my land, I don’t need to go cap in hand begging to anyone. I can decide what I want to do with my land, which is tied to independence of women. And the economic independence of women, which is very critical and the centre of this conversation,” he noted.
Emphasizing the significance of women’s land ownership, Mamedu said, “Because he who owns the land controls everything in the land, and can have the capacity to decide the kind of crop that that person would farm in that, and so it is tied to issues of control and independence of women, and so that’s very critical.”
In his presentation, SWOFON consultant Chris Kaka noted that despite multiple government reports acknowledging that women contribute about 60 percent to food production and food security in Nigeria, their ability to farm effectively is hindered by limited access to land.
“For us, we feel women owning land helps to inform the kind of crops you grow. They don’t grow vegetables that take two, three months to grow. They can grow crops that take a longer period, cashews and the rest of them. These are crops that take longer periods to actually grow. There are trees that have got economic value that take four or five years to actually grow. If the land is not yours, you can’t grow such kind of crops and trees there. So it’s important we have women have their own land, and it is important for government to actually provide that kind of land at concessional rates for women,” Kaka said.
Samuel Kasali, Chief Executive Officer of Be The Help Foundation, emphasized the critical role of smallholder farmers, particularly women, in Nigeria’s agricultural sector.
“As of today, we have about 38 million farmers, and of these 38 million farmers, about 34.5 million can be classified as smallholder farmers. But the truth of the matter is that when you hear smallholder farmers, it’s the most vulnerable groups. They have less than half to two hectares of land, which now makes sustainable production very difficult. But if we are going to address the truth, they are classified as poor farmers. These are the most vulnerable people that live on less than one to five dollars per day. And so we have to look at it. Otherwise, then we will wake up 20 years from now,” Kasali stated.
On her part, Comfort Sunday, SWOFON FCT State Coordinator said the group with over 500,000 rural farmers has been advocating for increase food production through capacity building of smallholder women farmers to demand for their rights and privileges from the duty bearers while serving as vocal and visible pressure group on behalf of small holder women farmers in Nigeria.
The meeting which witnessed commitment from different stakeholders also harped on the need to boost agroecology in farming practice even as it called for relevant policies to improve access to land by women farmers.
