How Deep-Seated Sexism is Making Food Insecurity Worse in Nigeria

Nov 2, 2022 | Philip Obaji Jr.
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Last year, Nigerian farmer Odam Obat lost about two thirds of her cassava crop to devastating floods at her home in the Niger Delta – a densely populated but erosion-prone region on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea.

To avoid such a loss again, she decided this year to dig drainage channels on the land, a cheap and effective solution she had seen farmers in neighbouring Cameroon employ.

Because Obat rented the land she farmed, she needed permission from the owner to make those changes. He refused, fearing the channels would look like lines of demarcation – and possibly lead to someone in his large extended family laying a claim to a slice of his acreage, a regular occurrence in the land-hungry delta, where ownership tussles are common.