How ‘Land Loans’ Help Tanzania’s Women Entrepreneurs Grow Their Business

Written by Staff

Jan 23, 2016

Despite shouldering the burden of family responsibilities and making up half of the agricultural workforce, women in Tanzania face discrimination when it comes to property rights, campaigners said.

Although Tanzanian law grants women the same rights as men to access, own and control land, and allows them to participate in decision-making on land matters, only 20 percent of women own land in their own names, according to USAID.

Prospects For Women

Women’s land rights are set out in the Land Act and the Village Land Act of 1999, which state: “The right of every woman to acquire, hold, use and deal with land, to the same extent and subject to the same restrictions be treated as a right of any man.”

But Tanzania‘s customary norms make it difficult for women to own land in their own right. Instead many access it through their spouses or male relatives, meaning they often end up losing it if the men die.

Laws are poorly implemented, denying many women their land rights, campaigners say. A knock-on effect of this is that women have problems accessing credit to enable them to expand small-scale enterprises.

Women’s businesses tend to be smaller, have fewer employees and poorer growth prospects than those owned by men.

TWB, in conjunction with Ardhi Plan – a real estate company – is hoping to improve prospects for women entrepreneurs by lending low-cost land.

“We have realised that most women fail to get bank loans because they don’t have immovable assets as collateral,” Margaret Chacha, TWB Managing Director, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Since the project started a year ago, more than a thousand women entrepreneurs in Dar es Salaam have secured land loans, the bank said.

“We urge women entrepreneurs to seize this opportunity to acquire the plots and get their title deeds which they can use to get capital loans,” Chacha said.

Borrowers are required to deposit at least 30 percent of the plot’s value and pay the rest in installments until they have paid off the loan and own the land outright. Campaigners have praised the initiative as a model for empowering women entrepreneurs, not just in Tanzania but across East Africa.