Few development challenges in Africa are as pressing and controversial as land ownership and its persistent gap between rich and poor communities. With a profound demographic shift in Africa from rural areas to the cities where half of all Africans will live by 2050, these gaps will become steadily more pronounced as governments and communities rise to the challenge of growing enough aff ordable nutritious food for all families to thrive on the continent. In some countries in the region, these gaps—allied as they are with high
poverty rates and large-scale unemployment—have become suffi ciently wide to undermine shared growth and social cohesion. Women are especially vulnerable. Th ey make up 70 percent of Africa’s farmers
and yet, for the most part, are locked out of land ownership by customary laws. Without a title to the land they farm, women are unable to raise the money needed to improve their small harvests or to raise living standards. This injurious legacy perpetuates poverty and blights the lives of women who are the backbone of Africa’s farming, present and future.