Dzodzi Tsikata Quotes

Africa is a continent of farmers, of small producers who do not have a vast production. Which doesn't mean that this is a bad strategy, because I believe that small-scale agriculture is promising and often undervalued. For example, Ghana has become a world leader in cocoa production based on small-scale agriculture. This should teach us that small farmers can produce successfully for the market.

It was an important initiative because it opened up space for women to participate in public life. In the 60s there were many affirmative initiatives to ensure that women were represented in Parliament.

A system in which some people do not have full access, control or possession of the land can only be uneven. According to the law, everyone can have access to the land, but there is discrimination regarding how to access the land, which affects women, young people and immigrants as well.

Without land control, women are second-class citizens. They also deny the right to work as farmers, because it is unthinkable to be a farmer without access to land.

There are many interesting initiatives being developed. There is a movement in several African countries to combat land grabbing. In many countries, there is a recovery of lands that were appropriated on a large scale. They are sabotaging activities, rejecting work and even sometimes destroying harvests. This is related to the idea that the government is not paying attention to the means of subsistence of these people. So they have to, basically, take care of themselves.

I believe that the land is connected with many fights. The main reason is that we are an agrarian country and the land is a crucial resource. For us, the land is identity, the land where we live is part of who we are. They may have political control.

For example, recently in Ghana, artisanal salt miners fought against a company that gained the right to exploit salt industrially in a large lagoon without paying attention to the people who, for thousands of years, made a living from mining artisanal on a small scale. This is one of the most recent interesting initiatives. Because of all these years of deprivation, small property owners are starting to organize themselves better in popular movements and are becoming more effective than they were.

We must center the voices and experiences of marginalized communities in our quest for social justice.

Anyone who declares himself/herself to be a feminist cannot fail to recognize the connection between women's rights and the right to land.

Sustainable development cannot be achieved without addressing the structural inequalities that persist in our societies.

For a long period of time, I paid attention to gender inequalities. Many governments over the years have made efforts to address the inequality agenda with some success. In the anticolonial struggle in Ghana, women were very active.

Due to him, in the first years of independence there were many social and economic public policies to support women. The government advocated universal education, for example, which ensured that many children went to school.

Women are forgotten individuals with disproportionate level of income due to poverty and deprivation.

The struggle for land is essentially feminist.

In Ghana, women produce in their communities until they get married. To live with their spouses, they leave their communities and go abroad in the new community and access to the land is mediated by their husbands. Then, when women grow old, if they don't have any men, they can lose access to the land. If they get divorced, they lose it automatically.