Greater Women Land Ownership Advocated

A 36-month study led by researchers of the University of Buea has recommended the upholding of women's rights to own and manage land for development and enable Cameroon meet its vision of an emerging Nation by 2035.

The research was presented at the University of Buea's Amphi 250 under the chair of Nalova Lyonga, Vice Chancellor. As Cameroon awaits its first gender policy law, three academics; Dr. Lotsmart Fonjong, Dr. Irene Sama-Lang, and Dr. Lawrence Fon Fombe have carved out their niche in the defence of women's rights over land ownership. As such, their investigators undertook a rock bottom fact finding in 2009 on the topic: "Land Tenure Practices and Women's Rights to Land: Implications for Access to Natural Resources in Anglophone Cameroon".

Sponsored by the Canadian-based International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in partnership with the University of Buea (UB), the researchers dug out a four-angle contextual definition of land. The study highlights purchase, inheritance, traditional attribution, gift and rent as means of accessing the soil. In the process, women do not muster enough muscles to compete with men over land ownership. The research equally highlights that whereas statutory laws are gender-neutral on land ownership, customary practices discriminate and disfavor women over land ownership. "Consequently, women are not able to enjoy equal rights to and benefit from land like men." the research concludes.

As a way forward, the researchers who used data collection as one of their methods from nine administrative Divisions, five from North West and four from South West, recommended the harmonisation and compilation of all existing land tenure laws and decrees in Cameroon into one document to facilitate access, gender inclusive land reforms, avoidance of ambiguity of staging the State as guidance and the traditional rulers as custodians of land, decentralisation of land registration, priority for women over sale of new layouts, reduction in cost, inclusion of women in the entire process of land registration and sensitisation to increase women's interest in acquisition of land to build their economic power.