Collaborative research project launched to advance Women’s Communal Land Rights in Africa

Coventry University academics have received funding to advance Women’s Communal Land Rights (WCLR) in East and West Africa as they aim to address the research gap in relation to gender and communal land rights on the continent.

A consortium of five international partners led by Dr Priscilla Claeys and Dr Stefanie Lemke from the university’s Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR), has been awarded $100,000 from the 11th Hour Project, The Schmidt Family Foundation.

In customary land tenure systems, which are still dominant in most of Africa, women are not recognised as having independent rights to land. This means they mostly have access to land through a relationship with a male relative, and their rights are often revoked should that relationship break down. Similarly, in the case of land dispossession, women are often not compensated for their loss of livelihood. There is also a lack of inclusion of women and youth in land governance.

The project will integrate four main areas of work: capacity-building; participatory research; facilitating horizontal and inter-generational dialogues; and action for social change.

By documenting and drawing lessons from household, community, to local government level, and facilitating conversations between women and men and between authorities and governing bodies, partners in the consortium will support overall actions that scale-up WCLR.

The funding will be shared equally among the five partner organisations:

• CAWR, Coventry University, UK.
• Kenyan Peasants League (KPL), small-scale farmers’ organisation, Kenya.
• Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC), Maasai pastoralist women’s organisation, Tanzania.
• CNOP-G, small-scale farmers’ platform, Guinea.
• COFERSA, a women farmers’ organisation, Mali.