Sana Wony Tieminta, Malian jurist and president of Femmes en Action (Women in Action) agricultural cooperative, told a conference recently organized by the Foundation for Agriculture and Rural environment in the world of challenges that women face to access agricultural land. A situation which gets more preoccupying as they do not have the law on their side.

The new agricultural law allocates a percentage of lands to women but takes into consideration culture. For a woman to have a land, her husband must first give his approval. Usually, what they get is very small space, half an hectare of a few hundred square meters to plant some vegetables, near their spouse’s field, Personally, I have six hectares at 60km from Bamako and I face all king of issues to get a deed, which is not even a guarantee, for my plot. This obviously hampers my ambitions and production also, Mrs. Tieminta told RFI.

Let’s recall that the FAO said Africa’s agricultural output should increase 20-30% if African woman have as much access to lands and production input as men.

Souha Touré