Fact Check: Zimbabwean women and facts on agricultural land ownership

Claim: Zimbabwean women own only two percent of agricultural land in Zimbabwe, according to a local newspaper report, which attributed this largely to the lack of finance to purchase commercial farms. The claim was attributed to the World Bank’s – Zimbabwe Gender Assessment Report 2023.

Is this true or false?

Verdict: Misleading

Verification by ZimFact shows that the statistics presented in the above media report have been taken out of context as they refer only to a percentage of women regarded to be part of the agricultural population (11,235,467). The research defined agricultural population as the population whose livelihood is linked to agricultural land.

A direct quote from the report cited by the World Bank states, “Documented ownership of agricultural land is low in Zimbabwe, just 2 percent of women and 3.8 percent of men are deeded landowners”. This was a citation from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat) 2019 report “Understanding Gender Equality in Zimbabwe”

For context, there are 309,257 documented agricultural land owners in Zimbabwe, of these 127, 232 are women and the remaining 182,025 are men. The graphic below shows that the dynamics of agricultural land ownership are more nuanced than the statistics shared in the said media report. Overall, 44.9% of the women in the agricultural population have ownership or secure rights over agricultural land.

Conclusion

While it is true that agricultural land ownership in Zimbabwe is lower amongst women, it is misleading to claim they constitute only 2% of agricultural land owners in the country when there are other dynamics to land ownership that were left out.