Do women contribute to the economy through landownership in Africa? A geographically weighted regression (gwr) approach

Women’s landownership is increasingly recognized as a driver of gender equity and inclusive growth, yet its macroeconomic effects remain understudied. This paper examines the growth impact of female landownership in 30 African countries using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and more advanced Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). The study uses two measures of landownership: the share of women owning land, and a novel gender-gap index capturing differences in land ownership per square meter between men and women. Both OLS and GWR regressions reveal that while the percentage of female landowners is significantly related to growth, the gender-gap index is not. Therefore, policies aimed at increasing female landownership at the expense of male ownership may not enhance growth. Moreover, the OLS regressions show a nonlinear relationship in which female landownership positively affects growth only up to a certain threshold of which beyond these positive effects disappear. The GWR further show that only a small sample of francophone West African countries find a positive and significant impact of landownership on growth whilst the remaining countries produce insignificant estimates. These findings suggest that colonial and legal factors in Africa explain ‘why some women contribute to the economy through landownership and others do not’.This study shows that increasing women’s landownership can support economic growth, but only to a certain limit. In many African countries, especially some in francophone West Africa, the link between female landownership and growth is stronger due to legal and colonial history. However, simply transferring land from men to women does not guarantee better economic outcomes. The results suggest that efforts to boost growth through gender equity in landownership need to be tailored to each country’s unique context, rather than applying one-size-fits-all solutions.