July 23, 2025 – Addis Ababa – A regional workshop organized under the auspices of the African Union is bringing together public decision-makers, traditional leaders, land governance experts, and engaged women from over twelve countries across West, East, and Central Africa. The aim: to lay the groundwork for transformative, gender-sensitive land governance that ensures women’s equitable access to land—an essential lever for development, social justice, and lasting peace.
The opening day of the regional awareness workshop on gender-sensitive land governance and women’s land rights brought together a wide range of stakeholders: government officials, traditional leaders, civil society representatives, financial institutions, and land specialists. They all converged around a shared understanding: securing women’s land rights is essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, consolidating peace, and strengthening conflict resolution dynamics. From the outset, discussions highlighted the critical role of land tenure security—especially for women—in transforming socio-economic systems. While policies do exist on paper, participants underscored the urgent need for deeper reforms, both institutional and cultural. Changing how women’s land rights are perceived and implemented requires collective commitment. States, civil society organizations, traditional authorities, financial institutions, and local communities are all called upon to work together.
However, beyond this mobilization, discussions revealed persistent and structural challenges. Across Africa, women produce more than 60% of food but remain largely marginalized in land ownership. Social and customary norms—often discriminatory—continue to restrict their access to land. Some credit institutions’ practices even exacerbate these inequalities, undermining women’s ability to acquire or secure land.
It was also noted that women are not a homogenous group. Their access to land varies based on age, marital status, ethnic background, or economic situation. This acknowledgment reinforced calls for female solidarity, encouraging women to support one another in defending their rights and building stronger collective power.
In this context, the workshop introduced an innovative approach: the Gender Transformative Approach (GTA). This strategy aims to correct power imbalances, dismantle discriminatory norms, and adapt legal frameworks to better reflect gender realities. It is based on the recognition that gender—as a social construct—profoundly shapes land access through legal systems, social norms, and institutional practices that are often exclusionary.
To better understand the mechanisms of exclusion, participants referred to the “bundle of rights” framework, which includes access, use, transfer, and control of land. This model helps identify gaps in women’s land security and propose concrete solutions. In this regard, the African Union has set an ambitious goal: in line with its 2009 Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges in Africa, at least 30% of documented land rights should be in women’s names—a threshold considered essential to advancing gender equity in land systems across the continent.
To achieve this, attention naturally turned to existing legal frameworks. International and regional instruments—such as CEDAW, the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGTs), and AU Land Policy Guidelines—offer valuable guidance. Yet their national-level implementation remains uneven. Land, family, and inheritance laws can contradict one another, while the coexistence of customary, religious, and statutory rights creates legal pluralism which, without alignment with constitutional and human rights principles, continues to perpetuate inequality.
Even when gender-equitable laws are enacted, their enforcement faces major barriers: weak institutions, lack of awareness among women, complex procedures, and ineffective recourse mechanisms. Two problematic types of laws were identified: “gender-blind” laws, which unintentionally reproduce inequality by ignoring structural barriers, and explicitly biased laws, which directly limit women’s legal capacity and land rights.
Concrete proposals emerged to make legislation more equitable:
- Promote co-ownership and joint land registration
- Require spousal consent to protect wives’ interests
- Guarantee women’s representation in land governance bodies
- Provide legal protections for widows, divorced women, and female-headed households
- Facilitate access to identity and nationality documents
- Establish gender-sensitive dispute resolution mechanisms
But laws alone are not enough. Participants stressed the need for deep social change, institutional capacity-building, and inclusive governance that fully integrates women at all stages of the land governance cycle. As such, land administration became a central topic in the debates. For gender-sensitive land governance to be effective, action must be taken at every point in the administrative chain: surveying, registration, planning, taxation, and data management. Recommendations called for women’s active participation in these processes, the recognition of their rights even without formal titles, simplification of administrative procedures, consideration of women’s specific land use in urban areas, and the creation of Land Information Systems (LIS) incorporating sex-disaggregated data, linked to civil registration systems, and enabling close monitoring of gendered land indicators.
However, challenges remain. The lack of reliable data, fragmented systems, and institutional gaps hinder the realization of women’s land rights. An integrated, locally rooted, multi-sectoral approach is essential to harmonize laws, strengthen women’s empowerment, and institutionalize gender equality in land governance.
In summary, this first day of the workshop laid the foundation for profound change. It reaffirmed that land access can no longer be a privilege for a few, but must become a shared and equitable right. For this to happen, women must no longer be seen merely as beneficiaries—but as legitimate and influential actors in Africa’s land reform efforts. This gathering saw the confirmed participation of experts, public decision-makers, representatives of land institutions, and female leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, and Guinea. A level of mobilization that reflects the continent’s shared commitment to making land equity central to sustainable development policies.
By Franck Zongwe Lukama