The Country Director of ActionAid Nigeria, Andrew Mamedu has expressed concern over the persistent challenges women face in accessing land for farming.
The Country Director who was represented by ActionAid’s Director of Business Development and Innovation, Nkechi Ilochi-Kanny, during a town hall meeting organized by the Small-Scale Women Farmers Organization in Nigeria (SWOFON) on Wednesday in Abuja emphasized the need for both government and community leaders to take deliberate steps to ease restrictions on land ownership for women.
She urged state governments and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) administration to make land more accessible to women farmers across the country.
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.
“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 loose 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.
Mamedu also stressed the importance of economic empowerment for women to enable them to acquire farmland independently.
Also, the Chief Executive Officer of Be The Help Foundation,Samuel Kasali emphasized the critical role of smallholder farmers, particularly women, in Nigeria’s agricultural sector.
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 smallholder women farmers in Nigeria.