Oxfam Horn, East and Central Africa Blog

Promises, Power and Poverty: Corporate land deals and rural women in Africa

Tatu, a woman farmer in Tanzania, harvesting potatoes

A new Oxfam briefing paper, Promises, Power and Poverty: Corporate land deals and rural women in Africa, reflects the unfortunate finding from recent research that the promises of development benefits from corporate land-based investments are not materialising.

Instead unequal power relations, including widespread gender discrimination, are resulting in many rural women losing access to land and being pushed into greater poverty due to such investments. Men are also affected, but the failure to listen to rural women and involve them in decision making leaves them with more of the negative outcomes and fewer, if any, benefits.

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The Upper Nile refugee crisis – a view from the ground

A refugee woman sheltering in Jamam camp

For its size, the humanitarian response to the Upper Nile State refugee crisis was one of the most expensive in the world, but what did it look like on the ground and what has it been like for the refugees themselves? Oxfam’s Humanitarian Policy Adviser in Maban County, Sultana Begum, gives us her take on the situation.

Beginning in November 2011, nearly 200,000 Sudanese refugees fled across the newly created border to seek refuge in Upper Nile and Unity, northern states in the world’s newest country, South Sudan. I’ve spent the last few months based in Maban County, Upper Nile state, talking to refugees about their experiences and finding out about the situation in the refugee camps. They described harrowing journeys fleeing aerial bombings and ground fighting, walking for weeks on end, and only surviving by eating wild fruits, edible roots, and drinking dirty water.

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Rural Ethiopians use mobile phones to ring the alarm on drought

In the arid Shinile region of eastern Ethiopia, pastoralist communities are now using mobile phones to monitor water points and provide early warning of droughts before they strike.

Ali monitors a water point with his mobile phone

Every morning since he was a young boy, Elmi Farah has walked his family’s animals from their mountain home to the local water point. He’s seen good times and bad, some years of plentiful pasture and some years of drought. During the severe 2011 drought, half of the family’s 200 goats and sheep died. This year has been better, he says – but there are warning signs the situation could take a turn for the worse.

“In the past few months the number of animals coming here to get water has increased a lot.” This, Elmi explains, means there must be poor rains and a shortage of water in other areas, forcing people to come here to find water for their livestock – the main assets of people in this region.

It’s this kind of information and local knowledge that Oxfam hopes to capture more effectively using mobile phones – a new opportunity as phone networks spread to remote areas that still have few basic services, and where droughts are a fact of life.

“We used to write letters when things got bad,” says Ali Mohammed.

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Making markets work for women smallholders in Tanzania

Farming in Tanzania

As we launch the findings of our research on Women’s Collective Action in agricultural markets, Global Research Adviser Martin Walsh, who helped to develop the methodology for the case studies, summarises the results and recommendations of the Tanzania study.

Women are, quite literally, the backbone of agriculture in Tanzania. But all too often they don’t own the land they work on and struggle to get fair access to markets and fair prices for their produce. Over the last two years our Female Food Heroes competitions have worked to bring women smallholders the national recognition that they deserve, and have acted as a springboard for campaigning on their behalf.

The good news is that working collectively can help women to overcome some of these barriers. Our research showed that women’s collective action (WCA) group members in Tanzania earn almost 70 per cent more than comparable women working outside of the groups; in Mali and Ethiopia this figure is even higher, at around 80 per cent. The less good news is that traditional barriers still limit WCA members’ engagement in markets, and that women’s income gains don’t always translate into broad-based empowerment at household level, though they do have some positive impacts.

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Stopping to listen to those who help themselves

Sometimes the most valuable insights into communities and development can be found by taking time to stop work and just talk and listen to people. Makarand Sahasrabuddhe reflects on a few days of random conversations in northern Tanzania:

A couple of colleagues and I recently had the opportunity to roam around for a few days in Ngorongoro district in Tanzania. Oxfam implements a number of programmes in the region, all of them “rights-based” and broadly in the economic, social and gender justice spheres. The programmes focus on the Maasai, a predominantly pastoral community.

The idea of the trip was simple – we were trying to understand:

• If our programmes are making any difference to the lives of the people
• In what way our programmes complement each other, or whether in fact they are pulling in different directions
• What are the aspirations of the community, and how they see their future

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South Sudan: Helping citizens hold politicians to account

An MP-public dialogue in Abiriu

It’s a common complaint among South Sudan citizens that their politicians have not visited them since their election, have not delivered on campaign promises, and don’t inform them how public money is spent. For their part, MPs say they don’t have the resources or systems to engage with the communities.

As part of the Within and Without the State project, which is working with civil society to promote more accountable governance, we have set up a series of events to bring MPs and their constituents together, to answer questions and account for the allocation of resources.

Hundreds of people attended a recent MP/public dialogue in Wulu, near Rumbek – one of several held over the past couple of months. Among them was Mary, a local constituent, who commented: “Those MPs said, ‘If you vote for me we will provide boreholes and tools for the community.’ I want to ask the MPs where those things are now.”

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From the camps of Congo to the corridors of the UN

Originally posted on the Huffington Post

I spent a good part of this winter in Goma, Eastern DRC. I went to cover the conflict in the region and see for myself the programs that aid agency Oxfam had been scaling up since the region imploded in November of 2012. Literally tens of thousands of people had just fled their villages in the hope of finding some peace. Many of them walked for days and risked their lives to get to Goma in one piece.

I went to the Bulengo camp, home of some 50,000 displaced Congolese. I also spoke to men and women in the ever-growing Mugunga camp now home for some 60,000 people. Families of five were living in small 8ft x 5ft huts, built of straw, pieces of clothing and volcanic rock. People had little food to eat and were relying on humanitarian assistance for their survival.

I’ve been working with aid agency Oxfam for more than eight years, covering humanitarian crises from Niger and the Occupied Territories to Somaliland and Haiti. I thought I had “seen it all’ — until the Congo.

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A Day in the Life of a Mogadishu ambulance driver

Ismail's ambulance makes a stop

It is 6 am and already the alarm is going. These are early days for HIJRA‘s ambulance driver in Mogadishu, Ismail Mohamed.

Ismail is not one to oversleep but today he is more tired than usual, having been on call for 24 hours.  This morning it takes him a few extra minutes to clear his head of sleep, and realize that the alarm has gone off. But once he’s awake he moves immediately. Today he has started so early that even his wife, up preparing breakfast, is surprised to see him up and dressed, already grabbing his keys and heading for the door.

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Justice at last for Tanzania villagers owed money by gold mine

Maimuna Said

For the past four years, villagers in Mwime in northwest Tanzania have been waiting for payments promised to them after a new gold mine opened up on their land. Oxfam’s Chukua Hatua project has been supporting their campaign, and the village has finally received their money. They are now planning how to spend it.

“I feel so happy inside, you know. Is this really happening? We have been tirelessly chasing this money for almost four years,” says Maimuna Said, one of the leading figures behind the village’s campaign. Maimuna was one of the first citizens to start asking questions about where the money owed to the village had gone.

Back in 2007 the village of Mwime owned land and licences for two nearby gold mining sites. When Barrick Gold Corporation moved into the area, it entered an agreement with the village and set up the Buzwagi Mine on that land.

The company agreed to pay the village 60 million Tanzanian shillings (currently about $37,000) annually for five years, after which both parties would review the agreement depending on the mine’s production levels. The yearly payment was supposed to start in 2009 – but it never did.

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Tanzanian women talk about land

Women's Land Dialogue

In Morogoro, Tanzania, Oxfam held a series of Women’s Land Dialogues – opportunities for rural women to discuss how their land and property rights can be improved.

Women sat on benches under the shade of trees, surrounded by small mud huts with grass roofs. The colourful mix of clothing styles illustrated the diversity of Kwambe village, including small farmers from a number of ethnic groups and pastoralists who are mostly Masai.

“The Women’s Land Dialogues are an opportunity to discuss land issues and to learn,” Zenais Matemu of Oxfam explained. “We can learn from the good examples and from the problems women face with land. Women produce the food, but they produce it on land that they do not have strong rights to.”

Nearly 200 women and men attended the day’s event. Some women shared how they have lost land. After Jenny’s husband passed away, a dam was built on her land. She was not compensated and there were never even any negotiations with her. It happened in 2003 but this was the first time she had shared the story – for years she had kept quiet, but today she was animated and bitter about what had happened.

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