Empowering Urban Women Entrepreneurs Through Housing Development And Land Ownership In Ethiopia And Mozambique.

We are living in an increasingly urbanizing world and recent estimates indicate that more than 2 billion people will be added to the number of urban dwellers in developing countries over the next 2 decades . In many cities of developing countries more than half of the urban population lives in slums and squatter settlements in sub-standard housing and without basic services. In some African cities, the figures are as high as 60-70 percent. Women constitute the majority of both urban and rural poor the world over. Many informal settlements have a high proportion of female-headed households. Globally, it is estimated that 41% of female-headed households live below the locally defined poverty line.

Unequal power relations between women and men, unequal inheritance rights in some countries, limited or no access to productive resources such as land and property, credit and technologies, as well as inadequate support for women entrepreneurship are some of the major causes of women's poverty. Many times inheritance is treated as a secondary issue in policies concerning women, Yet inheritance is the commonest way women are denied fair access to land. In some countries the constitution still provides for discriminatory customary practices against women. "Women are still grossly denied the right to adequate housing and related rights such as land and water. We live in a world today where millions of women are homeless and landless. Many millions more due to non-implementation of their rights to housing and land, are one step away from becoming homeless and landless. Poverty is a critical overlaying factor that intersects with the other factors to deny wornen their right to adequate housing."Security of tenure for women and children may not be realized, due to unequal household relationships based on discriminatory laws, customs, traditions and/or economics. In settlements upgrading involving regularization of tenure, or in new projects, specific measures must be taken to ensure that extension of secure tenure benefits men and women.

Achieving the millennium development goals agreed to by all governments will not only require us to provide shelter for the homeless but to provide decent and affordable shelter for more than a billion slum dwellers by the year 20203 . One of the challenges in meeting the Millennium Development Goals on the prevention of slums is mobilizing financial resources necessary for both upgrading and slum prevention by supplying nevv and affordable housing to lower income groups on a large scale.

If adequate financial resources are not set aside for the developinent of urban shelter and requisite services, then the growing urban population will be caught up in the vicious circle of poverty and will live in deplorable housing and have poor health. In many developing countries, it is unlikely that conventional sources of funds will be available for investment on the scale required to meet the projected demand for land and housing development. Complete houses available through mortgage finance are way beyond the reach of many people in the developing countries because they are not able to raise the requisite deposits and income criteria set by conventional mortgage institutions* The mujority of the urban poor are only able to build their houses incrementally in stages, as and when financial resources become available,

Governments in the HABITAT Agenda affirmed their commitment to gender equality. They expressed a need for undertaking legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and the ownership of land and other property. At its 19111 Session, the UN HABITAT Governing Council adopted Resolution 1 9/16 Women's roles and rights in human settlements development and sfum upgrading, which invites governments to increase financial and other assistance to LVN-HABITAT to enable the Programme to strengthen the mainstreaming of gender issues and the work of the Gender Coordinating Unit, in particular in support of gender specific slum upgrading projects and especially those related to employment creation, women's empmverment, housing improvement and property rights. The Governing Council at its 20th Session adopted resolution 20/7 on Gender equality in human settlements development, which further urges governments to promote proactive policies in favour of strengthening effective women's rights to land and shelter. Governments reaffirmed their support for women's rights to land, housing and property when they adopted Resolution 2] /9 Women's fand and property rights and access to finance.

The General Assembly in paragraph 58 in Resolution A/RES/60/1 2005 World Summit Outcome adopted at its 60th Session reaffirm that the full and effective implementation of the goals and objectives of the Beijing Declaration and Platform fbr Action and the outcome of the twenty-third session of the General Assembly is an essential contribution to achieving the internationally agreed development goals including those contained in the Millennium Declaration and resolves to promote gender equality and eliminate pervasive gender discrimination by: (a) GLIaranteeing the free and equal right of women to own and inherit property and ensuring secure tenure of property and housing by women; (b) Promoting women's equal access to labour markets, sustainable employment and adequate labour protection; and (c) Ensuring equat access of 'Nomen to productive assets and resources, including land. credit and technology.

Mozambique

Mozambique emerged from a devastating civil and near bankruptcy in 1992. The country has been recovering since then and is recorded as an international success story even though it is still one of the poorest countries in the world". The civil vvar prompted an unprecedented migration to urban areas, The end of the civil war only increased the urban pressures as people were desperately seeking employment opportunities in the cities. The majority of the migrants established themselves in informal settlements.

Women's roles and their resource ownership are greatly shaped by Mozambique's cultural and traditional background. According to a study done by UN-HABITAT in 2004, women have not historically been able to get land leases, to inherit nor have equal access to education. Over the years the Mozambican government has made strides in attempting to address gender inequalities, by giving constitutional protection against any form of discrimination, as well as granting women an explicit right to lease land. In spite of constitutional provisions on paper, in practice women still continue to be denied land leases. They have a low representation in the f01mal employment sector, have less access to education. and are less informed about their rights and some become destitute upon death of a partner.

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All land in Mozambique belongs to the state and people only get occupation or lease rights. l"he 1 997 Land Lavv granted individuals land rights based on historical occupation, accepting oral witnesses for ruling. While the law formally protects squatting practices as it allows people to occupy land that they have been living on for a period of not less than ten years, it has not proved effective in granting permanent settlement rights to its occupants. Residents have constitutional rights to land they live on, even if they have no formal title. If the government or municipality requires a particular piece of [and, they are required to provide land elsewhere and to compensate for any improvements.

Any dweller has the right to land he or she has occupied for ten years provided it has been for residential purposes. Without a formal title to land it is very difficult to obtain financing for small scale developments. According to a study by UN-HABITAT 011 land management in Maputo it was estimated that the cost of building a three bed-roomed house on land W'ith basic infrastructure such as water, electricity and sanitation at 3200 US dollar'.

Microfinance is promoted by the government, but niortgaging land is illegal. Borrowers can therefore only use structures on rand they occupy for collateral. Given the dominance of non informal methods of ownership of land, the situation of secL1rity of tenure and ownership of land for women are still problematic even though there are written laws protecting women. Most of the poor who are mostly women do not have enough income to make their living through the informal settlements.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia has a population of about 68 million and is the second most populous country in SubSaharan Africa. In 1975 Ethiopia's population was estimated at 33.9 million and 3.5 million people living in urban areas. The population increased to 53.5 million with 7.3 living in urban areas in 1994 and by 2002 the population had reached 67.7 million with 15 percent urbanites and of these urbanites about 80 percent live in crowded slums and other informai settlements 6 7.

Research carried out by UN-HABITAT in 1996 suggests that in urban Ethiopia as a whole, 61 percent of the population is working in the informal sector nearly two thirds of which are women. Studies done by the Association of Ethiopian Microfinance Institutions in 2002 put the figure of those employed in the informal sector at 51 percent of the economically active and it was then estimated that 70 percent of these •wvere women 8.

There are Inany constraints facing the fight against poverty, including a dearth of food aid, inadequate health services for the rural poor, and inadequate social infrastructure (schools, and water supplies). Weak technical capacity and poor financial resources are also major constraints. Social and natural calamities both contribute to maintaining the pervasiveness of poverty in Ethiopia. 45 Percent of Ethiopia's population can be categorised as absolutely poor . Urban poverty is manifested in persistently growing unemployment, poor quality dwellings and homelessness, increasing number of slums and squatter neighbourhoods, congestion, lack of basic services and infrastructure.

Prior to 1975 Ethiopia had no clear urban land and housing policies. After the ousting of Emperor Haile Selassi's regime by a socialist oriented government all urban land and rental dwellings were nationalized by passing proclamation No, 47/1975 in July, 1975. The proclamation abolished all forms of tenure. According to the proclamation, any person or family was granted use of urban land up to 500 square meters for the purposes of building a dwelling. After 1975 all undeveloped land became state property and was distributed to all Ethiopians who wanted to build their homes.

It is also important to note that large-scale private housing construction through real estate developers and private rental housing were prohibited. The open market exchange of houses was also not permitted. Houses could only be sold to co-owners or to the government. The proclamation which vvas issued in 19933 while maintaining urban land as public property, introduced a lease holding system which underlined that the use right of land would have both market value and time limit. Real estate developers were given 60 year leases whilst private developers were given 50 to 99 year leases. Under the lease hold system an individual house cooperative member was allowed a plot not exceeding 73 square metres free of charge for building a dwelling. Plots between 75 and 175 square metres were leased out at a nominal fee of about 0.50 Birr per square metre per year. Some of the housing cooperative members who could afford to pay opted for the larger plots. Land bigger than 175 square metres was also available on the property market through public tender.

In 2004 the Ethiopian Government set up the Integrated Housing Development Programme whose objective was to provide-low cost housing for all sections of Lhe society. Starting 2005, Ethiopia's urban development policies which were modeled around participatory democracy, environmental soundness, capacity building and accelerated economic gro mM11 vvere f.ocusing mainly on providing efficient and effective public services for urban residents. A Decentralized Land Development and Administration Agency (LDAA) was established to spearhead the provision of serviced [and to meet urban development needs in Addis Ababa and the other subcities. Under this programme the urban poor were mobilized into housing cooperatives and as a result women specific housing cooperatives were also formed. The government is still up-scaling the initiative and it is hoped that by 2010 the programme would have been introduced to more than 194 cities and towns and 400,000 housing units would have been built. The challenge to this programme is the lack of intermediary organizations between the comnunity and women housing cooperatives on the one hand and the government and the LDAA on the other. The proposed women land Access Trusts for Ethiopia will go a long way in bridging the gap.

The culture that denies women the right to land is considered to be the main threat to security of tenure för women. Generally speaking under Ethiopian culture security of tenure does not necessarily extend to women, for instance, houses are either constructed or purchased in the name of the husband. Should the husband die and the wife is still alive she has to go through court proceedings to secure legal access to the family house. Should a divorce or separation take place in wedlock, in nearly all the cases it is the woman who is forced to look for another house. In the event that she has no regular income of her own, she might be left with the humiliating option of being homeless or in squatter settlements.