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This report outlines the impact of land rights, access to markets and education on gender and food security in the Horn of Africa. Case studies are presented on two countries shaping food security in Africa: Kenya and Ethiopia.

Related information is available at www.cimicweb.org. Hyperlinks to source material are highlighted in blue and

underlined in the text.

According to the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), women produce fifty per cent

of the world’s agricultural output, but own approximately two per cent of its land. The UN Secretary General Ban

Ki-moon has repeatedly stated that food security cannot be achieved without women. Despite their critical posi-

tion in agricultural food chains1, women encounter obstacles due to limited land rights, a lack of education and

antiquated social customs which more often than not thwart their ability to improve food security conditions for

their families and their communities. Jacque Diouf, the FAO Director-General, claims that, “If women had the

same access to those resources as men, they would produce 20 to 30 per cent more food”; this equal access to re-

sources could potentially remove 100 to 150 million people from poverty and malnutrition. Therefore, food secu-

rity experts assert the need to improve women’s participation in food security by ensuring equal rights to land and

property, participation in the marketplace, and opportunities for education. To achieve these goals, the African

Union (AU) and international financial institutions (IFIs) have incorporated gender equality and land reform goals

in their recent initiatives, including the ambitious wide-ranging Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development

Programme (CAAPD). Despite the known benefits of incorporating women into cycles of agricultural production,

gender discrimination still prevents women from adopting more robust roles in maintaining food security.

Three key issues in the Horn of Africa (HoA) undermine greater access to women’s decision-making with regards

to food and livelihood. These include land rights, access to markets and education. This paper outlines major ob-

stacles posed to food security in the HoA region that are caused by gender inequality and land rights. It then ex-

plores several of the strategic options exercised by domestic governments and the AU to reform the current sys-

tem. The report includes an analysis of recent reforms undertaken in Ethiopia and Kenya, the only mainland HoA

countries to initiate a CAAPD programme2.

Land Rights

International statutes protect gender equality with regards to land rights and agriculture production, although these

legal codes are not always translated into practice. Specifically, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms

1 Agricultural food chain , also known as value chain, refers to the combination of agents and activities that, with regards to a product or a group of

products of agricultural origin, allow the production of their raw material, their transfer in time and space, and their transformation if needed, making it possible to adjust to the consumer’s taste and needs. 2 Seychelles signed a CAAPD compact in 2011.

January 2013

Comprehensive Information on Complex Issues

The Impact of Gender and Land Rights on

Food Security in the Horn of Africa

C I V I L - M I L I T A R Y F U S I O N C E N T R E P R E S E N T S

Foard Copeland

Mediterranean Basin

Assistant Desk Officer

Trista Guertin

Mediterranean Basin

Team Lead

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of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Maputo Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa enjoin

states to protect a woman’s right to property, education and general food security.

The right to own, control and access land is fundamental to both food security and gender equality. Secure proper-

ty rights are critical for two reasons. First, they ensure that land can be used to produce food for consumption.

Second, ownership of land provides additional income that can be used to purchase food, healthcare and other

livelihood needs. Additionally, the World Bank (WB) has found that property ownership for women increases

bargaining rights, improves family stability, and bolsters household economies. Citing these reasons, the interna-

tional community has adopted legal instruments that protect the rights of women to own property. Article 15 of

CEDAW gives women “equal rights to conclude contracts and to administer property”. Drafted more recently, the

Maputo Protocol was adopted by the AU in July 2003. The protocol recognises the prominent role women play in

agriculture and sustainable development and calls for AU states to “promote women’s access to and control over

productive resources such as land and guarantee their right to property”. The Maputo Protocol establishes the

“Right to Food Security” and both Articles 15 and 18 protect a woman’s right to property and land. Article 21

stipulates the right to inheritance, which provides women an important decision-making function and often safe-

guards young children who might be overlooked in favour of a sibling due to birth order, gender or a similar social

bias.

Despite the attempts at extending women wide-ranging legal protection, these international statutes pose several

shortcomings. For instance, only 29 of 53 AU countries have ratified the Maputo Protocol, including Kenya and

Djibouti. Ethiopia and Somalia signed the treaty in 2004 and 2006 but have yet to incorporate its provisions into

domestic legislation. Additionally, several UN member-states, including the US, have not formally adopted

CEDAW, a convention drafted in 1979 that has since been ratified by 187 countries. Both predominantly Christian

and Muslim countries in Africa have criticised the Maputo Protocol, claiming that it undermines traditional cus-

toms and violates Islamic marriage laws. Finally, the AU has not established a mechanism by which to file a com-

plaint against a state in violation of the protocol, which leaves a critical protection gap unaddressed by the law.

Obstacles that prevent the extension of land rights to women vary. For example, the objections to the Maputo Pro-

tocol made by states on behalf of religious concerns exemplify many customary laws and traditions that are some-

times used as pretext to discriminate against women in the HoA region. Even in countries that have adopted the

Protocol, women remain unprotected in rural areas where education levels are lower and access to urban centres is infrequent. In such environments federal equality laws often prevail in cities, but women who demand justice in

rural and peri-urban centres often expose themselves to risk of domestic and community violence or social mar-

ginalisation.

Countries that have ratified the Maputo Protocol

Ratified Signed Neither Signed nor Ratified

Source: African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights

(ACHPR)

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Access to Markets

Food security is intricately connected with value chains and the access that producers have to markets. A value

chain is defined as “the set of actors and activities that bring a basic agricultural product from cultivation in the

field to final consumption, where at each stage value is added to the product”. Across the HoA region, farmers and

pastoralists figure prominently in value chains, especially as goods are bought and sold at local markets. Because

inclement weather conditions result in frequent droughts, pastoralism provides an important supplement to the

region’s farming economy, which maintains at least forty per cent of the continents’ livestock. Farmers and pas-

toralists are rarely self-sufficient, and what they cannot produce for themselves, they must purchase. This has led

to a reliance on markets to establish household food security and meet livelihood needs. When women are pre-

vented from reaching markets, they are unable to capitalise on the secondary benefits of land ownership and sell

products that supplement gaps in home-grown food produced for consumption, which often falls short of meeting

basic nutrition requirements.

The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) concludes that female participation in the marketplace

buoys food security for entire communities. When compared to their male counterparts, women will spend more

money to improve family livelihoods by purchasing nutritious food, investing in education, and paying for

healthcare. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) points out that physical access to the market-

place also increases knowledge about weather conditions and availability of foodstuffs, meaning that women who

access markets can prepare their families and communities to reduce the risk of famine. Across the HoA, primary

barriers to female participation in the market include both poor infrastructure and labour constraints. Weak infra-

structure, such as dilapidated transport systems and erratic communication services, often inhibit rural women

from physically reaching an urban centre that supports a marketplace. While weak infrastructure certainly poses

obstacles for men, women are typically more vulnerable due to variables such as pregnancy and physical security

while traveling.

In a few communities, traditions of subordination to men or clan affiliation, are cited as valid reasons that prevent

women from accessing local markets. However, labour constraints, such as the need to milk herds, collect water,

and oversee household/caregiver responsibilities more frequently prevent women from traveling to markets, or

staying long enough to forge strong economic ties. In recent years, NGOs have encouraged rural women to estab-

lish cooperative groups that are able to leverage their numbers and collective resources to combat entry barriers to

the marketplace. These local advocacy groups provide an array of services that range from education and security

to collective bargaining for the extension of credit to female entrepreneurs. Lending institutions such as the Kenya

Women Finance Trust (KWFT), tout the success of local cooperatives and “client groups” as a primary factor en-

abling them to reach under-served rural populations. Since 2000, KWFT has tripled its loan rate from 29,000 rural

women to over 100,000 loan recipients in 2012.

Education

On average, women receive less education than men across the HoA region. For example, in Somalia, the female

illiteracy rate is twice as high as the male illiteracy rate – 50 per cent of men can read and write, whereas only 27

per cent of women can do the same. These wide divisions in education reduce the effectiveness of women who

attempt to improve food security. In the last thirty years, agricultural techniques have grown in sophistication, and

FAO asserts that women are handicapped by their inability to read technical manuals. Agricultural extension ser-

vices have proven effective at increasing crop yields and can mitigate disparities in education levels. Such pro-

grammes deliver training to women about cash crops, sustainable farming practices, and herd management.

In addition to technical training, educating women about their legal rights, including inheritance laws and property

ownership, is critical to improving food security for rural populations. Rural women and girls often lack an under-

standing of their rights to land simply because they are not educated about them, even when gender equality laws

have been adopted at the federal level. According to the ICRW, female education programmes need to provide

instruction to both sexes on legal rights. Curricula for such projects can include sustainable financial and agricul-

ture practices, as well as family health and livelihoods. In Kenya, UN Women coordinates the Joint Programme on

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Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (JPGEWE), a broad initiative that provides instruction to rural

women about a range of legal rights, including property ownership.

Educating women about credit also improves food security for local communities. The UK Department for Inter-

national Development (DFID) estimates that eighty per cent of individuals who benefit from microcredit pro-

grammes are women in the developing world. Therefore, educating women about capitalising on credit empowers

them to better utilise newfound land rights. The Pamoja Women Development Programme (PAWDEP) supports

value chain finance education efforts, which provide instruction to women about micro-lending opportunities in

key sectors such as potatoes, coffee, and livestock. Using the cooperative group model these initiatives educate

women about both their land and credit rights and then encourages HoA farmers and pastoralists to exploit micro-

finance opportunities that provide entry to the marketplace and fortify food security.

African Union and the CAADP

The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAAPD) is a framework for agricultural

growth. It is the flagship AU programme that targets barriers to food security by seeking to eliminate hunger

through agricultural production. A major goal of the project is to uphold gender equality standards to achieve pov-

erty reduction and food security. The CAAPD establishes two continental benchmarks, and each country partici-

pating in the programme signs onto achieve both targets: (i) increasing agricultural productivity by six per cent

each year; and (ii) raising public investment in agriculture to at least ten per cent of participating states’ annual

national budgets.

Twenty-three countries have signed onto the CAAPD Compact, including Ethiopia and Kenya in the HoA region.

CAAPD programmes are tailored to specific country needs. Typically, after a country adopts a CAAPD compact,

a national committee consisting of agriculture and public policy experts drafts an investment plan to outline steps

that must be taken in order to achieve CAAPD goals. When these documents are approved, a key agency of the

AU, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), facilitates financial and technical assistance for

participating governments. NEPAD then harmonises national investment and implementation strategies with de-

velopment banks and international donors.

In 2010, Ethiopia adopted the Agricultural Sector Policy and Investment Framework (PIF), a ten-year roadmap to

food security and increased agricultural production. In the same year Kenya adopted two similar agendas, the Ag-

riculture Sector Development Strategy (ASDS) and the Medium Term Investment Plan (MTIP), a policy that

drives medium-term agricultural growth between 2010-2015. The MTIP represents one programme of the larger

Kenya Vision 2030, a project that was launched in 2008 with the goal of lifting the country to the status of a mid-

dle-income economy by 2030. All three programmes demonstrate the substantial resources that domestic govern-

ments in the HoA region are investing in agricultural growth, and each incorporates women farmers into produc-

tivity goals at an unprecedented capacity.

Case Study 1: Kenya

In August 2010, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki signed into law a new constitution. The document was approved

by 67 per cent of voters and championed by international monitors as a landmark piece of legislation that will up-

hold gender equality and improve security of land rights for millions of Kenyans. Central to the document are a

citizens’ bill of rights and the establishment of a land reform commission. The bill of rights safeguards previously

unprotected rights for women, such as apportioning one-third of all seats in Parliament for women and solidifying

the right of a woman to inherit property from her husband. The land reform commission is charged with redress-

ing a post-colonial system that unevenly distributed land and manipulated property lines in return for political fa-

vours. The new body is largely expected to provide more egalitarian access to property, especially for women.

Following the adoption the new constitution, Kenya hosted the African Women’s Land rights Conference in 2011,

an event that symbolised the country’s success at extending land rights and opportunities for education to women.

The conference brought together regional and international governments to focus on three themes key to female

land rights: legal instruments, agricultural investment programmes, and gender equality in justice systems. In ad-

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dition to celebrating recent gains, NGOs such as ACORD also drew to attention their concerns that women at the

grassroots level still face discrimination “on issues of ownership, access and control of land”. Kenya provides a

pointed example of the difficulties to translate legal land reforms into livelihood improvements outside of urban

centres. Rural farmers – male and female alike – make up nearly eighty per cent of the population and are less

educated than urban citizens about their rights under the new constitution. Although men struggle to reclaim land

rights lost to them under the previous tenure system, women are disproportionately affected.

In much of the country antiquated social norms pose significant obstacles to gender equity. According to the

Georgetown University Law Center, “Women are unable to effectively assert their rights to property because of

gender bias in customary law and the lack of procedural safeguards for land disputes.” These laws tend to margin-

alise women while supporting disproportionate rights for men, and they are often respected and enforced, even in

violation of new constitutional protections. Teaching gender equality as a form of poverty reduction is one of the

most effective means of implementing the new federal law at a grassroots level because men are more willing to

share rights with female family members over which they once exercised a monopoly, if they see the economic

returns. For example, Jonathan Sedera, the Assistant Chief of the Ol Pusimoru, a tribe in the remote Rift Valley,

champions the financial benefits of female land rights. According to Sedera, “I have come to think the whole

question of gender equality is really about poverty reduction. Because men have been the only ones making deci-

sions about many things in society, distribution of property and land dealing. And men do not know it all. Women

also have a role to play”.

The success that land reform education initiatives have had on incorporating women into value chains and boost-

ing local economies is beginning to inform public policy and the investments of international donors. The US

Agency for International Development (USAID) committed over USD 35 million in 2012, an increase of USD 5

million from the previous two years. In 2008, USAID contributions for agriculture totalled just USD 5 million,

suggesting an approach that favours land reform and agriculture development to ensuring food security and reduc-

ing poverty.

Despite the international support, a recent review of the ASDS found that Kenya’s long-term economic strategies

have not adequately supported women in the agriculture sector. According to the report, “The MTIP does not ade-

quately or appropriately identify actions that will be taken or how programmes will be adjusted to or targeted to

address in particular the needs of women”. The review is a component of greater CAAPD requirements, and it

outlines the need for a gender policy in both the ASDS and the MTIP. Both the 2015 and the 2020 agriculture de-

velopment strategies call attention to an anticipated overarching government policy for incorporation of female

land rights into strategic development of the agricultural sector; however, a policy has yet to be drafted.

Case Study 2: Ethiopia

In a country plagued by chronic drought, women play a crucial role in mitigating food crises and improving food

security. The Ethiopian constitution, ratified in 1995, affords equal rights for women and men. A family code,

passed in 2001, extends additional land rights to women and was meant to curb early marriages, a common prac-

tice in Ethiopia. However, similar to Kenya, these recent legal protections are undermined by longstanding gender

biases. Customary traditions favour patrilinealism and limit education and land ownership opportunities for wom-

en, exacerbating the gender inequality gap in much of the country. Food security experts also point to the coun-

try’s maternal mortality rate, one of the highest in the world, as an indicator of female discrimination. This inequi-

ty is most pronounced in rural regions of the country, where approximately 85 per cent of the population lives.

Historically, land has been controlled by the state, which left farmers and pastoralists vulnerable to frequent prop-

erty shuffles. Since the fall of the Derg in 1991, Ethiopia has gradually improved efforts to extend land rights to

citizens through land tenure initiatives. According to USAID, land tenure is the “political, economic, social, and

legal structure that determines how individuals and groups access and use land and related resources—including

trees, minerals, pasture, and water”. Land certification programmes implemented over the last two decades have

secured property rights, educated landholders about land management and investment, and fostered better deci-

sion-making with regards to agriculture, pastoralism, inheritance, and property.

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Until recently, these efforts mostly targeted men as tenure in Ethiopia is based on virilocal custom that favours

patrilineal inheritance. However, in the last ten years, USAID has coordinated land tenure programmes with the

Ethiopian government to secure property rights for women in addition to men. A major goal of the tenure projects

is to empower women through both legal instruments and education. To achieve this objective, the agency invest-

ed USD 5 million between the years 2008 to 2013 on the Ethiopian Land Administration Programme (ELAP). The

project improves legal structures and certifies land rights for the individual. These vouchers signify a new promise

by the government that land will not be reclaimed in the future, and they also specify joint ownership of land be-

tween husbands and wives so that property deeds and land certificates include the names of both spouses. To date,

it has registered 700,000 land parcels. The gains made by ELAP are ground breaking because it educates entire

communities about the equality of property rights for both married and divorced women. This enables women to

inherit land in the case of divorce, or the death of a spouse. It also protects the rights of women to determine inher-

itance for her children – a critical issue for pastoral communities.

The sweeping land reform initiatives undertaken by the Ethi-

opian federal government align with goals outlined in the

Ethiopian CAADP compact, signed in 2009. To accomplish

its CAADP benchmarks, Ethiopia adopted the Policy and

Investment Framework (PIF), which prioritises both industri-

al agricultural programmes and smallholder development.

The agro-industrial goals set by the PIF seek to accelerate

private investment while maintaining land reform patterns

that have been successful in the previous ten years. The

2010-2020 PIF Roadmap cites the need for gender main-

streaming, especially in rural and pastoral regions of the

country: “In general, gender mainstreaming needs to be

strengthened and expedited…to enhance value addition in

the agriculture sector.” This finding is in line with research

published by the International Food Policy Research Institute

(IFPRI) about the impact of gender education on agriculture

indicators and poverty reduction. Agriculture extension ser-

vices can be successful at overcoming poverty gaps when

incorporating women into value chains; however, current

models in Ethiopia favour top-down approaches at the ex-

pense of grassroots agriculture reforms. IFPRI highlights the

importance of incorporating local agricultural needs into

broader government strategy, a fact that is echoed in the PIF roadmap.

Conclusion

The linkages between women’s land rights and food security in the HoA region are well documented. Women

bolster value chains and play a critical role in household management. When educated about ecological condi-

tions, they also contribute to sustainable farming practices. Despite the benefits associated with gender equity,

food security is often undermined by antiquated traditions and social systems that discriminate against women.

Several key issues remain priorities.

Enforcement mechanisms for land rights remain a barrier to equality. Although the adoption of CEDAW and the

Maputo Protocol has elevated the status of women in many communities, customary law also prevails. Women

must be able to redress violations of federal legislation through judicial mechanisms that protect and uphold gen-

der parity laws. Additionally, education is needed to inform entire communities about the rights of women. Tech-

nical training also improves the ability of women to succeed in the agriculture sector and grow village-level econ-

omies. Agriculture extension services provide robust opportunities to access credit and form cooperative groups,

both of which have been successful at reducing poverty and improving security for women. In coordination with

the AU, UN, IFIs, and international donors, states must operationalise broad strategy into grassroots programmes

that have a lasting impact on women, land rights and local economies.

Rural pastoral lands in Ethiopia

Source: Perry-Castañeda Library, 2012