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A USAID partnership with agriculture company Grupo Madal is improving productive land use and providing new economic opportunities

By: Thais Bessa, Gender Advisor, USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program

Joana Albrinho Ajudante and her neighbors started growing rice, sweet potatoes, and cassava on land that is owned by the Mozambican agricultural commodity producer Grupo Madal in 2017. Her small plot (0.06 hectares or 1/7 of an acre), which was not being used by the company, provided enough food for her family, but due to its small size and insecure land arrangement, she never had the opportunity to expand and earn enough income to help support her husband and three children.

Rather than evicting the farmers who had encroached upon its lands in the province of Zambézia, Grupo Madal is partnering with USAID to create a program that allows 1,300 farmers from adjacent communities to farm 1,000 hectares of the company’s land. With USAID’s support, Grupo Madal is also piloting a program that will allow another 2,000 people from 14 communities adjacent to Grupo Madal’s farms to become contract farmers and produce cash crops on their own land. In addition to the right to use the land, the programs provide inputs, extension services, and guaranteed market for cash crops, ensuring that land, which was formerly unused, is now productive and generating income for farming families and the company. 

In many rural communities in Mozambique, women often face restrictive gender roles, unequal decision-making power, and limited access to resources such as financing and land. Ownership and control over assets are central to women’s economic empowerment and their ability to contribute to local, national, and global economies. For many women, the most valuable of these assets are the land and natural resources from which they earn a living, provide for their families, and invest in their communities. Evidence suggests that strengthening women’s land and resource rights can have a positive impact on their bargaining power and decision-making, particularly around important household-level decisions such as expenditures for children’s health and education and intergenerational transfers, including inheritance.

As a part of USAID’s priority on women’s economic empowerment, the USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program is supporting Grupo Madal to integrate a strong focus on gender equality, social inclusion, and women’s empowerment in land allocation policies and procedures and in how the company engages with smallholder farmers. More than 85 percent of the 3,300 farmers participating in the ingrower and outgrower programs are women. Gender-responsive extension support is giving these smallholder farmers the assistance and confidence that optimizes results for them and the company. 

Under the USAID and Grupo Madal partnership, Joana has secured the use of a half hectare plot of land (1.25 acre), and she is eager to increase production, earn more income, support her family, and invest in other productive endeavors. “I am waiting to sign the contract with the company to start producing on the land. With the money I will get from sales, I will also be able to buy cowpeas from other producers and sell them to Madal as a way to create another business,” she said. Farmers like Joana are producing coconuts, beans, and other commodities to be sold to Grupo Madal, while also growing subsistence crops for their families, increasing food security in the rural communities. 

Advancing women’s decision-making opportunities

ILRG is also supporting Grupo Madal’s plan to expand their network of community extension facilitators to better reach, benefit, and empower the new farmers. In February 2021, using an open and transparent process, Grupo Madal recruited seven community members, four women and three men, with farming experience and communication skills to reinforce the work of the company’s extension officers and increase engagement within their communities. Joana was selected to be one of the facilitators. 

Most Grupo Madal extension agents are men, and having women engaged as community facilitators has improved the company’s ability to reach women farmers. This community-based extension model promotes women’s empowerment, as it inspires other women by increasing not only technical skills, but also their self-esteem and confidence. Together with the other extension agents and community facilitators, Joana participated in a training focused on addressing harmful gender norms, gender-based violence, and how to approach extension services in a gender-responsive way.

Every day, Joana improves her farming skills and builds upon her decade of farming experience. By joining the extension network, she has increased her knowledge about gender issues, human rights, and social norms. Her extensive knowledge of local customs, traditions, and language allows Joana to share information with communities in a relaxed and informal way. Community members see Joana as a trustworthy friend, neighbor, and more and more as a successful farmer.

(Please note: This blog includes sensitive content regarding violence. It was originally published by the International Institute for Environment and Development here.)

By: Thais Bessa, Global Gender Advisor, USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program

While Ruth was still mourning the sudden loss of her husband, his younger brother arrived on her three-acre farm to deliver a deadly threat: she must leave her home and farm or he would kill her and her children.

“He came with an axe,” she recalled. “I was so afraid. I had seven young children and there was nowhere to go and no way for me to feed them except for the farm.”

Taking agricultural land from widows is common across much of the world, including in sub-Saharan Africa, where most land – around 90% − is undocumented. When land is documented, the property is often registered in the name of men, who are considered ‘heads of the household’. Women are left off the documentation, and when their spouses die they regularly lose access to the family land.

In Zambia, laws on state-administered land stipulate that women and their children should inherit land, but in rural areas – such as the Eastern Province, where most of the land is regulated by customary rules − these laws do not apply. Land is divided into chiefdoms and regulated by customary rules.

Recognising women as landowners

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) Program is helping to resolve long-standing tensions over customary rights and promoting gender-responsive practices to encourage joint land registration. To do this, USAID is strengthening the capacity of local land documentation organizations in Zambia’s Eastern Province like the Chipata District Land Alliance and the Petauke District Land Alliance.

Through the ILRG Program, USAID has equipped these organizations with pioneering participatory methods and socially inclusive technologies like USAID’s Mobile Approaches to Secure Tenure (MAST) to document land in areas under customary laws. The MAST approach is designed for inclusive land documentation, with provisions to include persons of interest, which ensures that the process does not inadvertently simplify the representation of rights or consolidate collective rights into an individual one. Over the past six years, USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance program and the two local partners have documented the land rights of more than 30,000 parcels of land in Zambia, including 155,000 rights holders, nearly half of whom are women.

Leading by example

To complement the MAST approach, USAID integrated gender considerations into every step of the land documentation process. At the community sensitization stage, when partners explain land documentation steps and benefits, they also provide information on gender equality and social inclusion. Enumerators from partner organizations, who collect and verify data from each land parcel and landowner, were trained on gender equality, women’s land rights and gender-based violence. In addition, the Chipata and Petauke District Land Alliances engaged a gender specialist or focal point. Enumerators were encouraged to examine their own biases and how to find socially acceptable ways to encourage the participation of women and youth.

A series of practical guidance tools were developed for enumerators and other field staff involved in the documentation process. These practice ‘notes’ cover topics like gender-sensitive language, gender sensitization of communities and household members, best practices on speaking with traditional leaders about gender, and gender-responsive conflict resolution. The practice notes are useful since they detail specific gender barriers and concrete solutions for each step of land documentation, such as organizing meetings and boundary walks around women’s care taking responsibilities, ensuring that registration forms have space for more than one landowner, and collecting sex-disaggregated data.

The USAID approach also involved working with chiefs and other traditional leaders to promote meaningful participation of women in local land committees and gender-sensitive conflict resolution. In Zambia’s Eastern Province, USAID has focused on traditional leaders, also referred to as indunas, to influence changes in gender norms and behaviours in relation to land ownership and access practiced in their chiefdoms.

With USAID support, the Chipata and Petauke District Land Alliance staff developed their capacity to talk about gender equality at community meetings, centered on the benefits of secure land tenure for men, women, boys, and girls. In addition, staff were encouraged to reach out directly to women and men for one-on-one sensitization sessions. These dialogues offered a safe space for people to voice concerns and catalyzed getting women’s names on land documentation, marking significant progress for women in societies where speaking in front of men or speaking up in public is discouraged.

Securing land, securing futures

Following a one-on-one sensitization session with a land expert from the Chipata District Land Alliance, Ruth approached the local land committee to share how her brother-in-law was threatening to take her land. The committee intervened on her behalf and allowed her to assert her right to the farmland. Ruth and her children received a land certificate naming them as the owners.

“When I got the certificate and I settled back on the land, my brother-in-law came shortly after to threaten me once again,” recalled Ruth. “But this time I was not scared, I had a certificate and it says the land belongs to me and my children. I am a landholder because it has the signature of our chief,”  explained Ruth.

Land certificates and the broader documentation and dispute resolution processes are approved by local chiefs, reinforcing local validity and showing the importance of engaging influential stakeholders to ensure women’s safety and secure land tenure beyond having a certificate in hand.

Over the past six years, this work has shown that making land documentation gender-responsive requires a range of complementary approaches: inclusive technology, developing partner capacity, practical and detailed field guidance, and gender sensitization of communities and traditional leaders. This can empower women to assert their rights so they are included in land certificates, and change customary law, helping women like Ruth to feel confident that ownership of their land will be secure to support their livelihoods – and the livelihoods of their children – into the future.

Democracy is going backward in many places USAID works. The V-Dem Institute reported in 2020 that Latin America and the Asia-Pacific have reverted to a level of democracy last seen 30 years ago, while 60 percent of sub-Saharan countries are classified as “electoral autocracies.” Participatory natural resource management (PNRM) stands out as a potential means to counter democratic backsliding. Previous USAID work and well-known examples like community forest groups in Nepal and conservancies in Namibia support the proposition that PNRM can help achieve positive democratic outcomes.

See below for some updates on INRM’s work with USAID on PNRM and participatory land mapping. We also share some relevant resources from across USAID that explore land and resource governance, approaches to reduce corruption, and other governance issues.

In this digest:

INRM’s current governance work

• PNRM could play a role in mitigating democratic backsliding
• Participatory land mapping can help strengthen local governance
• HEARTH and INRM creating common indicators for cross-sectoral MEL

Additional USAID resources on governance

• Targeting natural resources corruption
• Five ways USAID is protecting the environment by improving land and resource governance
• Thinking and working politically to protect biodiversity

Read the full digest here.

In 1959, the Colombian government passed legislation to create national forest reserves and protect its many natural resources. The law, known as the Ley Segunda, helped to establish several national parks and protect forests from illegal logging and mining. However, for local communities and municipal governments, the law has had a lesser-known consequence: the proliferation of an informal property market.

The entirety of the Santa Rosa del Sur municipality—located in Bolívar in Colombia’s Caribbean region—is protected as a part of the larger Magdalena Forest Reserve. A lack of clear land rights has not helped the municipality deal with activities like illegal gold mining and illicit cropping. Due to the municipality’s geography, only residents in urban areas are allowed to title their land and enjoy the benefits of formal land ownership.

Searching for Inspiration

“Other mayors need to understand that the budget will always be insufficient for a mayor of a municipality like ours, so it’s important to search for allies that can help develop your community.” —Fabio Orlando Mendoza, Mayor of Santa Rosa del Sur 

Delivering Land Titles

“If we’re all committed to our communities, then our main goal is seeing our municipality grow. And secure land tenure helps municipalities grow!”

Path of Self-Reliance

“We are confident. We are doing the awareness raising, the property surveys, and all the work with landowners ourselves. The families are motivated and happy, because this is the first time that they have seen this type of action in our municipality.”

This post originally appeared on USAID Land for Prosperity Exposure site. 

In recent years, countries around the world have adopted and strengthened laws that support women’s land rights, creating a foundation for greater gender equality. While this is good news, we know that women need more than laws and policies to fully realize their rights and have an equal say in decision-making about the management of land and natural resources. .

For many women, the ability to make decisions about land and natural resources depends on the support from their family and community. Whether a woman is a wife, a widow, a single daughter or a divorcee, her ability to benefit from legal rights to land in much of the world is influenced by the social norms, beliefs, and practices of  those around her.   

USAID is working to better understand and change social norms to empower women and increase gender equality in the land and resource governance sector. Recently, two of USAID’s land sector programs, Communications, Evidence, and Learning (CEL) and Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG), completed a collaborative workshop on social and gender norms change. This was done in coordination with USAID’s Passages Project (2015-2021), which provides technical assistance and capacity building to projects that seek to understand the role of social norms in their programs.

The workshop tackled issues such as: (1) why social norms matter to achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment in the land sector; (2) why it is important to assess social norms at the outset of a project, and what are the best ways for doing this; (3) how to design social norms interventions; (4) how to measure normative shifts in complex environments; and (5) what are some of the ethical concerns and considerations related to social norms interventions.

Learnings from the workshop were recently published in a technical brief for USAID Missions and implementing partners: Gender Norms and Women’s Land Rights: How to Identify and Shift Harmful Gender Norms in the Context of Land and Natural Resources. The brief introduces key social norms concepts and tools to identify and shift harmful norms in the context of land and natural resources. It also provides resources for programs in the land and natural resource sector to better understand and identify gender norms, design and implement norms-shifting activities, and monitor shifts. The new resource provides practical guidance that helps  USAID, donors, and international development practitioners  grapple with this complex issue and improve the chances that land rights programs will incorporate effective normative change interventions that increase the support from women’s  families and communities when it comes to exercising rights to land.  

For more information on USAID’s work on women’s land rights, please visit www.land-links.org/gender-equality.

Three-way Collaboration among USAID Projects Passages, ILRG and CEL

The Passages Project seeks to build the evidence base and advance global knowledge and capacity for the design, implementation, and evaluation of norms-shifting approaches with an eye towards sustained and scalable programs.

The Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program supports USAID Missions to implement activities to strengthen land rights, support inclusive land and resource governance, build resilient livelihoods and improve gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The Communications, Evidence and Learning (CEL) program provides USAID with an integrated approach to knowledge generation, dissemination, and applied best practices to strengthen land, urban, and local sustainability programming. CEL was awarded funds in 2019 to further design and implement field-based programming across five countries to generate evidence and work with local partners to strengthen women’s land rights under the Land Evidence for Economic Rights, Gender and Empowerment (LEVERAGE) activity.

Photo: Gabriel Chiposse and Lydia Wahiya, husband and wife in Namalapa Village, Mozambique. Credit: R. Singer for USAID ILRG

USAID and Colombia’s Superintendence of Notary and Registry (SNR) continue recovering important land records by digitizing files and building the entity’s capacity to serve a healthy land market.

In 2016, when USAID tried to support the Colombian government with the digitization of rural land and property files, this initiative encountered resistance. In Cauca, for example, public servants opposed moving any physical land files off the premise. They locked and barricaded the doors, and when the files were finally loaded into a moving truck, they filmed the action and published videos on social media denouncing the “theft of Cauca’s land documents.”

In a country where issues of land ownership and access were at the heart of a six-decade conflict, the mistrust is understandable. Historically, a centralized land administration process has been carried out by a series of government agencies headquartered in the country’s capital of Bogotá. The Superintendence of Notaries and Registers (SNR) is the agency responsible for overseeing and protecting property in Colombia and houses the registry of all properties, including historical information about each parcel, including everything from who bought and sold a parcel to the mortgage used to purchase it.

Today, the SNR has 195 regional offices located throughout Colombia. In each office, millions of land documents rest in cardboard boxes, old filing cabinets, and mildew-filled basements. Each file represents a registered property, and some files include dozens of sheets of paper. In addition, there are more than 93,000 ledgers—large leather-bound books where regional superintendents, trained in calligraphy, wrote down information, such as liens, mortgages, and transactions, involving each parcel. The oldest of these ledgers date back to the 1870s.

Originally published on the International Institute for Environment and Development blog.

Zambian land is governed through statutory and customary systems. Under the statutory system, the Zambian Constitution states that men and women have equal rights under the law, and the 2014 National Gender Policy gives traditional leaders a central role as champions of gender equality in their respective chiefdoms. These rights, however, do not extend to one of the most valuable assets that Zambia has: its land, and in particular customary land, which represents between 60 and 94% of the country’s land. Customary tenure is a form of land ownership that is communal in nature and held under the control of a traditional leader like a chief.

Women’s rights to inherit land, outlined in the Intestate Succession Act, do not apply to customary land in Zambia. This exclusion has profound implications for Zambian women, as customary land accounts for well over half of the country’s land mass. Cultural and traditional practices in many parts of the country further limit women’s access and ownership of land. As custodians of tradition, Zambia’s 288 chiefs have the power and authority to address the barriers that women face in land access, control, and ownership.

To strengthen the role of chiefs in addressing harmful gender norms and practices, promoting women’s rights to land, and increasing women’s participation in natural resource management, the USAID-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program has been partnering with chiefs in Zambia at both local and national levels to support and strengthen the role of traditional leaders to champion women’s land rights, bridging legal, policy, and gender norms to ensure sustainable management of land and natural resources. As discussed in this previous blog, the USAID ILRG program implemented a pilot initiative to engage Indunas – local advisors to chiefs – in a year-long dialogue focused on gender norms and women’s land rights.

At national level, USAID ILRG is working with the Zambia House of Chiefs, an institution that provides coordination and operational support to chiefs across the country, to develop a set of guidelines aimed at promoting gender equality and gender-responsive policies related to the management of land and natural resources in individual chiefdoms.

Chiefs champion gender equality in land and natural resources

Recognizing there was a gender equality gap in land and natural resource matters in the chiefdoms, two chiefs advocated for developing The Gender Guidelines for Traditional Leaders in Management of Natural Resources in the Chiefdoms, a tool to operationalize the gender equality mandate stated in the National Gender Policy.  In coordination with the Ministry of Chiefs and Traditional Affairs, the Ministry of Gender, and a non-governmental coordinating committee, a sub-committee of the House of Chiefs developed the tool to address knowledge gaps and provide practical guidance on promoting gender equality in the chiefdoms in the areas of land, forestry, wildlife, water, fisheries, and minerals.

It includes guidance on strengthening chiefdom policies and governance approaches, as well as addressing discriminatory gender norms and gender-based violence that hinder women’s participation and benefit sharing from land and natural resources.

Leading the charge to advance gender equality

“We know the problem, we see it every day, we understand the need and we did this to get to the solution. It’s our solution summarized on paper.” – Chief Kaputa

The Gender Guidelines helped chiefs recognize the value of ensuring gender equality in the management of land and natural resources in their chiefdoms. Chief Kaputa, who chaired the subcommittee responsible for the guidelines, explained, “We are not utilizing the potential of women in our chiefdoms, we want to do so but [cannot] unless we know how. That’s why our idea was to have the guidelines as a training tool for chiefs that teaches them how to get women [actively involved] in the development agenda.”

Developing the guidelines was a locally-driven initiative, which directly led to its success. Traditional leaders designed this initiative to address an issue that they had identified as undermining the development of their chiefdoms. Through their leadership and direct engagement, the initiative addressed the specific needs of their chiefdoms and leveraged existing relationships with key stakeholders.

Expected to officially launch in the coming months, the guidelines will be piloted in two chiefdoms through targeted implementation plans, including a coordinated approach to garner uptake by civil society organizations active in these chiefdoms. This pilot will provide a pathway for Zambia’s 288 chiefs to take concrete action to increase gender equality in the governance of customary land and strengthen women’s land rights.

“For many of the Royal Highnesses, it is difficult to address gender equality in the chiefdoms simply because they don’t know how to engage around the issue. These guidelines will make a huge difference… . The guidelines give us a plan and our role is to lead in its implementation and realize positive change in our chiefdoms.” – Chieftainess Muwezwa

About the author: Zenebech Mesfin is a Gender Assistant on the USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program. 

By: Tasha Heidenrich, Landesa Tanzania

In July 2021, listeners tuned in to hear the debut radio broadcast entitled, “Mwanamke na Ardhi,” or “Women and Land,” a radio program on Nuru FM, a local station in the Iringa region of Tanzania. The radio program is supported by USAID’s Land Evidence for Economic Rights, Gender and Equality (LEVERAGE) activity, which focuses on strengthening women’s land rights and women’s access to credit in Tanzania. This particular radio activity is being implemented by local partner Landesa in Tanzania.

Although rural women in Tanzania have the same legal rights to land as men, they are not always aware of these rights. For example, women may not realize they have a right to be listed on land certificates along with their spouses; or, if they are the head of their household, to claim land certificates in their own names. In certain cases, local customs and harmful gender norms  discriminate against women and prevent them from realizing their land rights. 

To address these problems, the “Women and Land” radio program will be broadcast throughout Tanzania over the coming 10 months. Each month, the program will cover a new topic related to women’s land rights, ranging from exploring the rules related to inheriting property to women’s roles in governance. Each radio segment will be complemented by a live question and answer session to give listeners the opportunity to actively engage around the topic of women’s land rights.

National radio programming, which will cover the same topics in a condensed format, will begin this fall 2021. These programs will be broadcast on a national radio station that is popular with Tanzanian officials and other influencers. Many of the radio segments were developed in partnership with local representatives and officials to ensure that they are timely and relevant to local audiences. 

Why Women’s Land Rights?

Improving land rights for rural women can yield large benefits, not only for the women themselves, but also for their children, their community, and for the environment. Research shows that when women have stronger land rights, they invest more in their land, invest more in their children’s health and education, and use more sustainable farming methods that can increase both crop yields and household income.^1,2,3,4 Importantly, some research also shows that women with clear, documented land rights are less likely to experience domestic violence.^5,6  

By sharing information with rural Tanzanians, including those in leadership positions, about women’s land rights – while also trying to move the needle on the local practices that can stand in the way of women’s ability to exercise their legal rights – the radio program works to increase awareness about women’s land rights and improve the enabling environment for women’s land rights throughout Tanzania.

Why Radio?

Radio programming is an effective tool for education and behavior change in Tanzania as it is by far the most popular form of media throughout the country. It is made freely available to its audiences, has a wide reach that includes the country’s most remote areas, and is a popular source of news and information for men, women, and youth. In addition, radio is accessible to illiterate populations, and is a safe and practical way to communicate to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interactive portion of the “Women and Land” radio program will directly engage its audience, bringing practical concerns to light, and make the information relevant and actionable.

By increasing Tanzanians’ knowledge about women’s land rights, “Women and Land” aims to help shift attitudes and behaviors around this important topic. By openly and widely disseminating information about the benefits that women, their families, and communities gain from women owning land in Tanzania, the radio program hopes to give women confidence to become more engaged in decision-making pertaining to land, and to encourage women, men, and local and national leadership to actively advocate for equitable land rights practices across Tanzania. 

***

LEVERAGE is administered under the USAID Communications, Evidence, and Learning project and is implementing programs, research, and evaluations to increase women’s land rights.

For more information on USAID’s work to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment in the land and resource governance sector, check out the new landing page on LandLinks.

References

¹Ali, D.A., Deininger, K. and Goldstein, M., 2014. Environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in Africa: Pilot evidence from Rwanda. Journal of Development Economics, 110, pp.262-275.

²Allendorf, K., 2007. Do women’s land rights promote empowerment and child health in Nepal?. World development, 35(11), pp.1975-1988.

³Bezabih, M., Holden, S. and Mannberg, A., 2016. The role of land certification in reducing gaps in productivity between male-and female-owned farms in rural Ethiopia. The Journal of Development Studies, 52(3), pp.360-376.

⁴Santos, F., 2014. Can microplots contribute to rural households’ food security? Evaluation of a gender sensitive land allocation program in West Bengal, India. GAAP Case Study.

⁵Grabe, S., 2015. Participation: Structural and relational power and Maasai women’s political subjectivity in Tanzania. Feminism & Psychology, 25(4), pp.528-548.

⁶Meinzen-Dick, R., Quisumbing, A., Doss, C. and Theis, S., 2019. Women’s land rights as a pathway to poverty reduction: Framework and review of available evidence. Agricultural Systems, 172, pp.72-82.