CLAIM:‘Only 2% of Zim women own agricultural land: World Bank’
On May 2, 2024, NewsDay, a local privately-owned daily newspaper published a story under the headline: ‘Only 2% of Zim women own agricultural land: World Bank.’ The publication attributed the claim to the World Bank (WB)’s Zimbabwe Gender Assessment Report The actual claim in the World Bank report reads, ‘Documented ownership of agricultural land is low in Zimbabwe, just 2 percent of women and 3.8 percent of men are deeded landowners’
However, the World Bank report took its 2% figure from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat)’s 2019Understanding Gender Equality in Zimbabwe: Women and Men in Zimbabwe Report The ZimStat report speaks of 2% women of the agricultural population with documented ownership – not all Zimbabwean women Reading the ZimStat report indicates that overall,2.8 percent of the agricultural populationhave documented ownership of agricultural land with women constituting 2 percent and men 3.8 percent – of the total agricultural population, not the whole Zimbabwe population
This means that of the agricultural population who have documented ownership of agricultural land, 2% are women Agriculture Population was defined in the survey as the population whose livelihood is linked to agricultural land Interest was on the adult agricultural population, i.e the adult population living in agricultural households
A household is considered agricultural if it has operated land for agricultural purposes or held/tended livestock over the past 12 months, regardless of the final purpose Apart from the NewsDay being wrong in how it interprets the World Bank figures from ZimStat- making it 2% of Zimbabwean women, instead of 2% women of the agricultural population with documentation – it is unclear how ZimStat gets to a total of 2.8% of the agricultural population having documented ownership of agricultural land As shown in the figure below, ZimStat says the 2.8% total is from 2% women and 3.8% men, with no explanation on how this total came about It would make more sense if the total is 5.8%
Key factors to take note of in the ZIMSTAT 2019 Report
In this particular survey, ownership/use rights information was collected using the following proxy conditions:
Source: FactCheckZW
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Source: Factcheckzw
