Emplacement
"Women have decided to be at the forefront of decision-making, to be sure each village has land plans, and that each plan indicates where the land is for farming, livestock and homesteads. They are part of meetings that make these decisions." stated Ndinindi Kisimera, Director of Maasai Women's Development Organization (MWEDO). Unless women control the asset of land and secure livelihoods and housing, women can only take their community development work so far.
At the Women's Land Link Africa (WLLA) Land Academy in Arusha, Tanzania last week fifty participants from twenty-two groups in seventeen countries analyzed their common strategies, success and challenges in the struggle toward land and housing tenure. They affirmed the vision of the HC Land and Housing Campaign for a world where women can claim, gain and maintain land, housing and livelihood as a means of empowerment and the foundation for sustainable community development.
About Women's Land Link Africa (WLLA)
Since 2004, Women's Land Link Africa (WLLA) members and partners have worked together to improve women's access to, control over and ownership of land and housing in Africa. As a result, hundreds of women have gained access an ownership of land and housing through reversed evictions and disinheritance, registered marriage and death certificates, and obtained individual, joint and communal land titles. More than fifty community watchdog groups have formed to oppose and eliminate the eviction of widows and orphans from their land, over eight hundred plots of land have been acquired by women and grassroots women leaders have exchanged practices in over twenty peer learning exchanges and African regional Land Academies. The network has grown from four organizations in three countries to twenty-two organizations in thirteen countries.