Females put shoulder to plough
Savings but no title deed? No problem for Kenyan women who are receiving loans to turn idle land into gold
FOR THE women of Tuluroba village’s self-help group, the goal was simple: use their combined savings to buy cattle, fatten them and sell them to the beef industry for slaughter. But there was a problem.
“We had no land to graze the cattle. Nor could we obtain a loan from a bank to buy land because, as women, we do not own title deeds,” said Fatuma Wario, who chairs the 13-strong group.
That is common. Few women in Kenya have land title documents, and few are getting them: since 2013, less than 2% of issued titles have gone to women, the Kenya Land Alliance, a non-profit, said in March last year.
And because getting a loan from a mainstream bank requires collateral – typically in the form of a land title document – most women are locked out of the chance to start a business.
In the end, the women of the HoriJabesa group borrowed money from an institution that loans money to women’s groups without requiring land title. Instead, the cash from their savings underwrites the loan.
In Wario’s case, that meant switching their savings account to the bank that was prepared to extend a $1 000 (R13 875) loan. Using that money and some of their savings, “we bought cattle and hired land to graze our stock”.
That was in 2017. Doing so meant the group could rent 4 hectares of pasture at a cost of 30 000 Kenyan shillings (R4 200) annually.
Interest on the loan is 12%. In their first year they earned $10 000 from their investment – with each fattened head of cattle bringing in $30.
The first step for Wario’s group was to become a partner with the Programme for Rural Outreach of Financial Innovations and Technologies (Profit), which is funded by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra).
David Kanda, an adviser at the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation who has seen the impact Profit has had on women like Wario, said about 60 female groups in eastern Kenya were benefiting. Apart from livestock enterprises, the programme also supported women to do poultry and bee-keeping on hired land.
The programme began in December 2010 and is scheduled to run until June this year. After that, it will be evaluated with an eye to continuing it, an Agra official said.
Getting a loan requires that the person be an active member of an agribusiness network. She can then apply to a farmer-lending institution for a loan as an individual – in which case her share in the agribusiness network is her collateral – or with her group, as Wario’s collective did.
The Agricultural Finance Corporation, a government agency, is one such lending institution. Operations head Millicent Omukaga said more than 40 000 women have benefited from non-collaterised loans. None of the loans has gone bad.
“Our aim is to double the number of women beneficiaries. But the overall aim is to see them financially empowered so that they can fight for their land rights.”
That has proved the case for Mabel Katindi, a widow who lives in Kathiani village in Machakos county, 195km south of Wario’s village.
The 42-year-old lost her husband a decade ago. Since then she has had to fight off relatives trying to chase her and her three children from the plot she inherited. Her husband did not have a title deed. As it is ancestral land, it fell under one title deed held by the eldest member of his family, she said.
“Our land is not very good for growing food crops because the rains are not enough,” she said.
After joining the women’s organisation in 2017, Katindi learnt that she could use her share to apply for a loan.
In March of that year she borrowed 50 000 Kenyan shillings from a savings and credit co-operative, and used that to plant drought-resistant brachiaria grass on some of her land. The grass has thrived, she said.
“Demand for the grass is very high because it makes cattle produce a lot of milk. It also does not require a lot of rain to grow,” said Katindi.
Each bale earns up to 300 shillings and the land generates 100 bales each year. The other half of the land is used to grow staple foods for the family.
Katindi said the returns had helped to mend relations with her husband’s family. “I use some of my money to support the relatives who wanted to chase me away from the land.” | Reuters African News Agency (ANA)