For most women in Burkina Faso, where approximately half of the population lives below the poverty line, life is a daily struggle. Typically living in rural areas, most women have little access to ongoing education or potable water. Yet because they are the majority of farmers and are responsible for child care, Burkinabe women spend much of their day performing field work, growing food and crops for their families. However, despite this often grueling work, most Burkinabe women are not allowed to own the very land they farm, because customary law excludes women from land ownership, preventing them from investing in the tools, irrigation, and seeds that would make their families better fed and their children better off.

Day 1 - Ritu Arrives in Ghana

Yesterday, I arrived in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Next week, my team will return to Ghana to meet with women in agriculture and trade. Tomorrow we leave for Burkina Faso, just to the north of Ghana, but I know I'll be back in Ghana before too long.

We have met with various U.S. government officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the West Africa Trade Hub. They all say they work with women "by default," which sounds too much to me like a salesman saying "yeah, we've got that." Still, we've barely scratched the surface and we cannot judge something we know so little about. We also met with various women who make a living selling food in markets in Accra. My team will be back in Ghana next week to work with more local women's organizations.

Tomorrow we leave for Burkina Faso. My next update will be from there.

Me talking with a market vendor in Accra

Baby Kofi, who I met in Accra, and his mother

Talking about agriculture with plantain vendors

A typical plot of land

The women we talked to described a typical day for themselves: They wake up at 4 AM to clean their houses, fetch water (often walking miles to get it), and prepare their children for school. Then they head to small plots of land they farm (but not necessarily own) to tend to their crops. After several hours working in the sun (the average daily temperature is about 100 degrees), they return home to meet their children, who have returned from school, and prepare the midday meal.

Me watering vegetables on one of CBDF's farms

Burkina is working on a new land law to give people ownership of government or community held lands, as ownership is often a pre-requisite to getting a loan to buy more fertilizer or seeds. The land will be distributed based on current use--if a business is currently farming 1000 hectares of land, they'll get a big piece, if a women is currently farming a small plot of land, she'll get a very small piece.  In other words, if you're a small subsistence farmer you're going to stay a small subsistence farmer.  The emphasis is on growing agribusiness, not empowering the rural women who are the backbone of the economy.

However, even if the program were designed to benefit rural households, it wouldn’t reach most women, who are the majority of small farmers. Even if a farmer has access to a small piece of land, it can only be titled to the "head of household", which, as you can probably guess, is rarely the woman.The Ministry of Agriculture told us they would register land to women if she is the head of her household, but in this culture, no woman is going to claim that title and risk retribution from her husband and community.  Even if her husband is dead, the head of her household becomes his brother.  Joint titles are an option, but many men here have multiple wives, making joint titling next to impossible

Compounding the problem is the fact that in order to own land you have to legally exist, which requires having a birth certificate or another official goverment ID, documents most rural women don't have.

The result of all this? Women cannot control, improve, or generate additional income from the very land they work on day in and day out. This virtually guarantees that rural women and children will stay poor.

This is discrimination, plain and simple.  If you're poor, tough luck.  If you're a poor woman, well then, we really can't help you.  If I can figure out these "loopholes" in the land reform process in about 5 minutes, my guess is that pretty much every government official can too.  Catalina gives them the benefit of the doubt, saying that they aren’t aware of household dynamics.  I find that highly unlikely.

So, it looks like we'll be working in Burkina for a while, supporting our local partners to straighten out this myriad of loopholes.  Poor women really do need "lobbyists" looking out for their interests. Everyone else has one and it shows.

Yesterday we drove about hour outside of Ouaga to the villages of Droaogo. When we first arrived at Droaogo we met the mayor, from whom we were required to ask permission to visit one of CBDF's women's agricultural associations. He gave his consent and said he was very excited to have guests from the United States come so far to visit his villages. The meeting with the association was excellent. We met with about forty women under a huge tree where they described their rice farming, the size of their plots, and their typical days in great detail. Of the 87 community plots that were prepared for rice, 32 have been granted to women, one of which is held by the women's association itself. Not bad.   They women talked a great deal about the fertilizers that they are able to buy when they do receive credit. They told us that, after using it on their crops, they pray like crazy that their yields are enough to pay back the loan AND earn a little extra income. They explained that one of the biggest barriers they face in trying to grow more and better crops (and thus earn more income) is that they simply do not have the resources to improve their land and farming techniques. For example, they have no machine to manually de-husk the rice, so they are forced to boil it, dry it, pound it and finally sift it, an extremely labor-intensive process for such meager profits. Most of the women also have kitchen gardens on which they grow greens for their families' meals. The association does try to save the income they earn from their plot to collectively invest in better farming tools. When we asked what they are saving the association's money for right now, the response was quick and clear: a rice mill and a new fertilizer that is rumored to simultaneously enriches the soil, improves the yield, and kills insects. This, they said, would improve their ability to feed their families by leaps and bounds. In discussing their worries about providing for their children, one of the villagers said something I will never forget: "We are poor, but we are not jealous. We have happiness and god in our hearts. And we know that we can make our lives better." Tomorrow is filled with planning meetings and then I begin the journey home to Washington (D.C.). My next journal will come from Honduras, where I will attempt to live on a dollar a day, the amount of money that 1 billion people around the world struggle to survive on everyday. That should be pretty interesting, eye-opening or traumatizing, I'm not sure which. A bientot (see you soon). - Ritu

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