A gendered paradox in family farming
Family farming employs about 90 percent of Burkina Faso’s working population. Women make up 93.5 percent of the active female labor force in the sector, yet receive only 5 percent of formal credit. Across sub-Saharan Africa, male-headed households are on average 10.36 percent more likely to obtain agricultural credit.
Research usually treats customary land exclusion and formal financial exclusion separately. This study asked how the two combine into a cumulative exclusion of rural women, and what would make financial inclusion genuinely gender-transformative. The article appears in the International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Research and Studies.
The evidence base
The design was exploratory sequential mixed methods with a dominant qualitative strand. The team conducted 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews across four regions: Centre, Hauts-Bassins, Centre-Ouest, and Boucle du Mouhoun. Participants included 12 family farmers, with particular attention to women, 10 managers from banks, microfinance institutions, and credit unions, 6 policymakers and experts, and 2 producer organizations.
Three interview guides were tailored to each actor group. Interview data were triangulated with central bank, World Bank, and national statistics, Ministry of Agriculture reports, land records, and Burkina Faso’s National Gender Policy.
Where Evidano fit
The authors describe an iterative thematic analysis carried out in Evidano. An initial codebook was built from the conceptual framework, extended through open coding of interview excerpts, and then organized through axial coding into four configurations matching the four links of the exclusion chain.
Evidano also generated co-occurrence networks to show how concepts were connected. The network for land access and land insecurity contained 26 codes and 224 links; the network for agricultural finance and collateral contained 25 codes and 241 links. Both appear as figures in the paper and anchor its central argument.
What the study found
The authors describe a four-link chain. First, patrilineal norms exclude women from inheriting land; customary inheritance accounts for 60 to 70 percent of observed access, and formal titles or leases for under 10 percent. Second, informal arrangements such as verbal rentals and family loans can be revoked at any time, which discourages long-term investment.
Third, without land titles or payslips, women cannot provide the collateral banks require, and more than 70 percent of women interviewed had already given up on a credit application. Fourth, lack of credit pushes women toward short-cycle subsistence crops, reinforcing low recorded productivity in the eyes of lenders.
Women’s groups, solidarity guarantees, group savings, collective credit, warehouse-receipt credit, and mobile finance soften the exclusion but do not remove it. Intermediate land documents issued by the state are still not accepted by banks as collateral.
The paper proposes a three-dimensional framework, legal, financial, and organizational, and argues that the formal neutrality of financial institutions operates in practice as structural discrimination.
Why this case matters
This case shows Evidano used for more than theme lists. Co-occurrence networks made the links between land exclusion and credit exclusion visible, and the authors used them as evidence for a causal chain rather than a set of separate barriers.
It is also a French-language, multi-stakeholder study, combining the voices of women farmers, lenders, and policymakers. That makes it a useful model for gender, land, and financial-inclusion programs in francophone West Africa.
Limits and responsible interpretation
The authors note that the qualitative design limits statistical generalization to the national level, although thematic saturation was reached. The data are self-reported and do not replace an analysis of actual bank portfolios.
The producer sub-sample was not strictly gender-balanced, by design, and the study covers a single country. The authors call for a multi-country comparison across the West African Economic and Monetary Union.
How Evidano fit the workflow
- 1Cover the whole chain of actors
Thirty interviews spanned farmers, lenders, policymakers, and producer organizations in four regions.
- 2Tailor the interview guides
Three guides included specific questions on women’s access to land, collateral, and credit.
- 3Seed a codebook
An initial codebook was built in Evidano from the conceptual framework.
- 4Code openly, then axially
Open coding extended the codebook; axial coding grouped themes into the four links of the exclusion chain.
- 5Map co-occurrence
Evidano generated co-occurrence networks showing how land and finance concepts connect.
- 6Triangulate
Findings were checked against central bank, World Bank, national statistics, and policy documents.
“L'analyse qualitative repose sur une démarche thématique itérative menée sous AILYZE.”
“Des réseaux de co-occurrence ont été générés pour visualiser les structures relationnelles entre concepts.”
A framework-based codebook was extended through open and axial coding.
Co-occurrence networks showed how land exclusion feeds credit exclusion.
Interviews and analysis were carried out for a French-language publication.
The paper names Evidano and labels its network figures as Evidano analyses.