Promoting access to land and gender equality through women's cooperatives in Senegal

Although in rural areas of Senegal women carry out most of the work in the fields, their right of access to land remains an open question. 

To reverse this situation, a project with gender perspectives central to its core was born five years ago that helps promote cooperatives to manage vegetable gardens, financed with microcredits. 

The initiative, in which the Catalan Cooperation Fund participates, has already helped create 21 agricultural gardens benefitting more than 1,400 women in Casamance, an area in southern Senegal. In total, the gardens that form part of the project span more than 186,400 square meters and generate more than 243 tons of produce annually.

The fund is now opening a new phase of its project in the African country with €30,000 allocated to strengthen women's cooperatives through training in ecological agriculture, financial management, and which will contribute to empowering them.

In the town of Medina Boutialabou, Mariama Mane, one of the 23 women who cultivate this land as part of the cooperative, explains to the Catalan News Agency (ACN) that the garden “allows us to have money to feed our children and family, and also guarantee their education." 

In the farm where Mane works, there are fruit trees growing bananas and mangoes, as well as crops of various vegetables, including onions, cabbage, lettuce, hot peppers, aubergines, and even hibiscus leaves.

Part of what is grown there is for the women and their families to eat, while other parts are for sale. 

In total, there are 21 such women's cooperatives like the one in Medina Boutialabou that are self-managed in the Casamance region.

The local organization Forum for an Endogenous Sustainable Development (FODDE), which specializes in food self-sufficiency and gender perspective, was the driving force behind the project in Senegal, while the Catalan Development Cooperation Agency has supported the project for the past six years.

The executive secretary of FODDE, Seydou Wane, admits that women’s rights to access land in Senegal is very limited. "Although the Constitution includes it, in practice this does not happen, because reality responds more to tradition than to modern law."

"In the rural environment, the land belongs to the men, they are the ones who control it,” Wane adds.

Mariama Mane says that "in Africa, we work much more than men, and despite this, it is very difficult for us to have access to the land." It is women who carry the burden of domestic tasks too, and who, in the countryside, take on most of the tasks of agricultural production. 

Now, however, the self-sufficiency cooperatives are making life easier for women. "They are organized as if they were a small company, and this grouping makes it easier for the city council to agree to grant the land to the cooperative for them to exploit," explains Seydou Wane, who adds "it's a big step forward."

This year, the cooperation between Catalonia and Senegal begins a new phase based on training, with funding from Catalan Development Cooperation Fund of around €30,000. The aim is to strengthen the different cooperatives that have been created, support them, and allow the gardens to continue to grow, with the women working in the fields participating in the training, offering their experience to those who need support.

Amy Sabaly, a representative from the Migration and Development Commission of the Catalan Fund, highlights the importance of the gender perspective in agricultural plots: "It's about empowering and strengthening women, enabling them to self-manage the gardens and get economic returns from them."

"Women are the core of the African continent and we need to accompany them," Sabaly tells the Catalan News Agency, who also underlines the importance of women "having access to the land and being able to preserve it."