Laws Without Land: Women's Land Rights in Ethiopia and Nigeria

In farming economies across Africa, women work the land far more than they own it. They supply close to 40 percent of crop production labour in major economies such as Ethiopia and Nigeria, yet hold only a small fraction of documented land rights, a gap that depresses farm productivity, restricts women's access to credit, and lowers the share of household resources spent on children's health and education. This policy brief compares two countries that begin from a similar place: strong statutory protection on paper, but weak protection in practice, and they diverge on implementation.

Ethiopia ran a large, independently evaluated certification programme (LIFT) that placed women's names on 77 percent of 7.1 million certified parcels, exceeding the African Union's 30 percent target years ahead of schedule. Nigeria, facing comparable conditions, has legislated and litigated women's land rights but has never built the administrative machinery to deliver them; fewer than one in fifty Nigerian women owns land in her own name. The central finding is that the binding constraint is no longer the law but its implementation. For Nigeria, the priority is a low-cost, community-based programme with joint titling as the default, modelled on Ethiopia's experience and adapted to its federal and religious diversity. For Ethiopia, the unfinished task is converting certificates into enforceable rights, particularly in the pastoral regions the programme never reached. The work in both countries is now administrative rather than legislative.

Read the full brief here.

Prepared by: Politics4Her Africa, Policy and Research Writing Officers

Research contributors: Sabah Achouri, Jedida Mupako, Anna Fiore, Mariem Jrad,

Rajaa Faizadi, Taiwo Oyindamola Oludipe

Regional focus: Ethiopia · Nigeria

Date of publication: 22 September 2026