About 70% of Sierra Leonean women are employed in agriculture and women provide 75% of the labor along the food value chain, from production, processing to marketing, according to a 2018 Country Gender Assessment report by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and ECOWAS.
Agriculture is the most important sector in the economy of Sierra Leone, accounting for almost 50% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the 2018 Integrated Household Survey (SLIHS).
But despite their pivotal role in the country’s nutrition and the economy, most women do not have access to farming land. This is the case in Bramaia chiefdom, in the Kambia district, Northern Province. Most women here do not privately own or have access to land. “Because farming is our only means of sustenance, female farmers take the extra mile to rent farmland to do their trade,” said the leader of Lanfayma Farmers’ Association in Kambia District, Aminata Koroma.
Between April 2015 and March 2017, the FAO implemented a program meant to Promoting Effective Engagement in Agribusiness for Women’s Cooperatives in Sierra Leone, according to their website. However, no public information exists about the program’s cost, its goals, and achievements.
A Request to Access Information submitted to the FAO in line with the Right to Access Information Act (RAI) 2013, was not answered, despite multiple follow ups.
Only about 4% of Sierra Leone’s farmland is owned by farmers. Out of the country’s surface of 72 million hectares (ha), nearly three-quarter or 75% is suitable for crop production on a sustainable basis. But less than 15% of this arable land, representing 8.1 million ha was cultivated in 2018, and just 2.2 million was owned by farmers, according to the SLIHS.
Farmers in Sierra Leone owned just 4% of the total farmland. Agriculture contributes almost 50% to the GDP. With more investment in agriculture, the economy could also improve.
“Women in agriculture and rural areas have less access than men to productive resources. If women are legally entitled to similar access to land, custom laws often prevail in rural areas. Society practices patrilineal inheritance, so land is generally passed down from father to son. Also, women face the risk of losing control over the land when their husband dies or if they divorce,” a 2018 joint FAO/ECOWAS report states.
Renting land by the “heap”
Women who do not own land, will have to rent. But there are some women who cannot afford to rent by the hectare, and they end up renting by the “heaps,” for which they pay Le40,000 a heap for one season, or six months, according to Aminata Koroma. Together, the women sometimes rent over a hundred hectares of farmland cumulatively in one farming season, Koroma said.
“Many a times landowners refuse to sell land to female farmers because they are inclined that women lack the power to manage farmland. The attitude of landowners discourage us, but since farming is our source of income, we continue to persevere in our farming stride. However, because of this, we are unable to plant many of the crops we want to plant,” Koroma explained.
She was disappointed that they have made several complains and requests for farmland to various government officials, who on numerous occasions promised to change the narratives of female farmers, but their situation remains the same.
The table details the percentage of men and women who own farmland for each district. On average, a farmer owns about 0.37 hectares a land.
According to the SLIHS, both men and women farmers have very little access to farmland. In Kambia, for example, only 7.18% of the female-led households owned their own land. And even those who owned, the parcel was extremely small, an average of about 0.37 ha per household.
Data available in the SLIHS shows that farmers who don’t own land, receive “permission” to farm from various authorities, including from traditional authorities and possibly speculators.
In return, these farmers pay either in money, in harvest, or other goods. According to the 2018 SLIHS, over 300,000 households paid a total of Le37,000,000 to get permission to farm the land, in addition to paying other goods.
Lansana Hassan Sowa, head of Programs for Sierra Leone Network on The Right to Food (SiLNORF), said that before 2015 the land ownership laws did not favour women in rural communities, who are mostly farmers in the North. “Women are unable to do much when it comes to farming because of the security of land tenure. Greater percentage of the country’s Gross Domestic Product comes from farming and 60% of the country’s population are famers. And if you split that, 40% are women and the remaining 20% are men,” Sowa said.
In its New Direction Manifesto, President Bio stated that “Agriculture remains the engine of economic growth and development in Sierra Leone.” The President promised that women will receive direct support for large scale farming and agro-processing activities, and that they will be provided with market information about local and export markets and promoting female access to land and other strategic resources. President Bio set priority actions, such as increasing investment in agriculture, increasing food crop production, increasing cash crop production, and improving land management, among others.
This newspaper submitted a Request for Information to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security (MAFFS), but the Ministry refused to respond within the legal timeframe.
Saidu Kalokoh, chairman of the Tamaraneh Farmers Association (TFA) and the organizing secretary of the Agricultural Business Center (ABC) in Waterloo, said that lack of farmland, fertilizers, pesticides, and farming equipment hampers the productivity of female farmers in the Western Rural District. “Most women who are involved in farming experience raising meager income because most of them do not have access to land, their crops are destroyed or eaten by rodents and pests since they do not have access to pesticides and insecticides.” This, he explained, results in low crop productivity farm season after farm season.
“Lands are private property to some of the community stakeholders who are afraid to lease or rent land to female farmers,” he said. “The livelihood of female farmers depends on their produce. They eat, buy clothes, and provide shelter etc. out of what they produce. Most female farmers cultivate cassava, rice, groundnut, potato, okra, vegetables and many others which are consumed daily by most Sierra Leoneans.”
By Ibrahim S. Bangura
5/01/2021. ISSUE NO:7973