Land & corruption in Africa EMPOWERING WOMEN, MONITORING CHANGE?

The intervention: overall goal  The overall goal is to contribute to improved livelihoods of men and women adversely affected by corrupt practices in land administration and land deals, and thereby to enhanced security of tenure, as well as to equitable and fair access to land, and ultimately to sustainable and inclusive development and growth.

The intervention: specific objectives To address:  The lack of accessible and understandable information.  The inadequate access to justice on land issues for men and women.  The corruption in land administration and land registration procedures.  The secrecy and opaqueness around large land transactions and the political corruption which might be part of it.  The lack of monitoring and social accountability mechanisms to prevent and prohibit corrupt practices in the land sector at local, national, and regional level.  The absence of multi-stakeholder dialogue effectively tackling corruption in the land sector and building a strong coalition against it.

The intervention: operations  Chapters: Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.  The Chapters either work directly in and with the communities, and particularly those most affected or at risk of experiencing corruption processes; or work with and through other and more local partners.  The purpose of this community-rooted work is twofold:  to empower communities and individuals to finally hold duty bearers into account, leading to changes in the behavior of stakeholders involved;  to inform advocacy strategies in order to enable policy and institutional change.

The monitoring of impact & change  The project follows the logic of the TI impact matrix.  The matrix is organised around two main change areas which capture the main types of TI’s impact:  P OLICY C HANGE : The ultimate aim is to ensure that intergovernmental institutions, governments, political parties and businesses have all the necessary mechanisms, policies or laws in place to redress and prevent corruption, sanction corrupt behaviour, and promote good governance.  B EHAVIOURAL C HANGE : The ultimate aim is that individuals, communities, civil society organisations and social movements act systematically to promote global good governance and prevent corruption.  For each of the change areas above five levels were defined on the basis of the respective underpinning theories of change.  These levels reflect a progressive (albeit non-linear) trajectory towards higher impact levels.

The monitoring of impact & change

Changes in behaviour; empowering stakeholders, specially women  Capturing the baseline on the policy side was relatively easy.  Capturing the baseline on the behaviour side, whilst ensuring that progression could be assessed over time, required a perceptions’ survey.  The survey was organised along different levels of empowerment, the latter are inspired is inspired in Longwe’ Women’s Empowerment Framework (1995).  The assumption is that those affected by the intervention will move to the higher levels of empowerment where they will independently fight for their rights and against corruption.  This framework is particularly relevant for the case of women, who the are often the most discriminated and affected when it comes to the problematic of land, and more so of land and corruption.

What’s the current situation? Land ownership and gender  In terms of land ownership, unsurprisingly, women (26,9%) are less likely to own land than men (39,7%).  Equally, and when women own the land, they are less likely to have their name in a document that attest their ownership. Yet both men and women definitely ascribed the same importance to this than men.  Compared to male respondents, a high number of women report that their land is owned by their spouses and therefore unsurprisingly many women feel that their land can be taken away from them by their spouses.

What’s the current situation? Land security and gender  Women see family and relatives as less of a threat to their land ownership and rights than men.  Women tend to be more worried about private investors, businesses and government-linked institutions  Men are very much concerned about their children taking their land away, and only male respondents showed concerned for religious leaders as a threat to their land.

What’s the current situation? Participation & information and gender  Women tend to participate less than men in events/ meetings related to land issues/ awareness.  Both women and men’s participation seems to be limited to the attendance of community meetings.  Women were more likely than men to select options like lack of opportunity, lack of need and discrimination as hindrances.  Still in terms of reasons not to act, high for both genders is not knowing what action to take.

What’s the current situation? Land-related bribe and gender  Women are less likely to report that they have paid a bribe than men.  Women are more likely to pay a bribe to get a loan, get legal advice, or acquiring the land title.  Men on the other hand do it because everyone seems to do it, and more significantly in situations where they want to speed up land transaction, jump the queue of land adjudication processes, and in order to get legal advice.

What conclusions can be drawn?  For the universe of those surveyed gender differences do not come out huge, more so when it comes to participation and knowledge of what to do and when.  This is because capturing the views and perceptions of women respondents through the survey was incredibly challenging.  Some countries reported that in many cases to be able to run the survey teams had to ask permission to the women’s families/ spouses, and in many situations the husband would sit next to the woman throughout the survey interview.  In some instances, traditional leaders and community counsellors were used to attract the participation of women but this may have also had an influencing effect as these individuals often stayed present for the interview.

What conclusions can be drawn?  The results coming out of the male sample are accurate.  Overall men are facing great challenges, whilst their knowledge of rights and what to do does not seem particularly high.  For the land project this means that equal effort needs to be invested into these two groups to bring them both to a high level of empowerment.  If the findings for women were to be aligned with the literature as one would expect, then one can only conclude that women must be at an even and much lower level.

Moving forward  In order to tailor the approaches, the team will need to devise different methods of capturing monitoring data from women.  Increase efforts to raise both men’s and women’s awareness of their rights.  Better understand the complexity of corruption and land in contexts where corruption practices may not necessarily have a negative connotation due to culture and social structure.  Narrow the approach of the intervention to tackle the areas of most concern to stakeholders of both genders, which seem to be formal land ownership and land security.