Female Access and Rights to Land, and Rural Non‐farm Entrepreneurship in Four African Countries

This paper examines the relationship between female access to land, rights to such land, and engagement in non‐farm entrepreneurship in rural Africa. We used data from the four countries (Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Malawi) that were featured in the Living Standards Measurement Study—Integrated Surveys in Agriculture dataset for the period 2013–15. To estimate the relationship, we compute the marginal effect from the logistic regression, while controlling for other important covariates that explain non‐farm activities at the individual/household level. We find that overall, women's access to land and rights to such land significantly explain their likelihood to engage in non‐farm enterprises. However, this relationship is not seen across the sampled countries. In Nigeria, for instance, we find that though the relationship is positive, it was not significant. While for Ethiopia, Tanzania and Malawi, we find a positive and significant relationship. We explain our result based on two important perspectives. The policy implications of our result are included in the paper.