By Joseph S. Margai in Freetown, Sierra Leone
Women in the Kono District have claimed that they have limited access to their own land for both mining and farming activities.
Speaking during Thursday during a dialogue forum on the 2015 National Land Policy organized, by Graceland Sierra Leone at Satta Kumba Resource Centre in Koidu town, Kono district, the said women in the district want to gain access to their land.
Madam Massah Bona, Chairperson of the Women’s Wing in Nimikoro Chiefdom, who doubles as the wife of thePparamount Chief of Nimikoro Chiefdom, said many women in the District have access to land but they don’t have ownership of the lands they accessed.
“Sometimes, the men have been allocating land to us to farm, but when it comes to ownership we don’t have access. Land is one of the burning issues to women in Kono District. Even though authorities claim that they don’t sell land here, but the token they have been demanding for is not easy for women to get,” Madam Bona said.
She said she was very grateful to Graceland Sierra Leone for taking the National Land Policy of 2015 to them, which gives the women the mandate to own land.
Speaking on the theme, “Provisions Favourable to Women’s Access and Ownership”, Graceland Director Bondu Manyeh, said women are very active when it comes to working on the land but they continue to have limited access to ownership of it.
“Graceland Sierra Leone’s objective is to dialogue a way forward that can facilitate peace in areas of food production, mining, among others, which are done on the land,” she said.
She said her organization decided to engage the stakeholders in Kono District because the National Land Policy of 2015 has not yet reached out to them, adding that they took a particular portion of the policy that has to do with women’s ownership of land so that they would understand that there is a policy written for their right to own land.
The Graceland Director said the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) is funding the project to popularize the policy, particularly the portion that has to do with women’s ownership of land. They have plans to do the same in other districts, if they could access more funds, Manyeh said.
Graceland Sierra Leone’s Program Manager, Ben Ariko, said they are implementing a 12 months project called “Climate Adaptation Project (CAP)”, which is funded by OSIWA and the objective is to promote food security to give locals access to food.
“The world is experiencing climate change as we are seeing and hearing about flooding and mudslide everywhere and all of them destroy our crops and lead to food insecurity. Sometimes, the farmers would expect to have bumper yield, but the rain comes little or sometimes very much and whatever the situation, it has serious effect on the crops,” he said.
According to Manyeh, there are too much greenhouse gases going into the air from smoke that emanates from factories in advanced countries and in most cases, poorer nations suffer the consequences.
“By this kind of climate change, we should put mechanism in place to improve our agricultural patterns, women and youth, who mostly work on the farm, have no or limited access to land and this must change,” he said. He added that they need more partners so as to make us more resilient to climate change and access to food.
Speaking during the program, Gbense Chiefdom, Kono District, Chief A.M Kamanda, said 35% of women in the District have access to land.
He said the problem they have been facing is that whenever people identify land to farm, mining companies claim concessionaire rights and that has seriously undermined food security in the district.
All the participants of the dialogue forum asked Graceland Sierra Leone to make available the National Land Policy to all of them so that they can read and understand it properly.
