Impacts & Strategies

The common challenges faced by widows in Africa include torture by the late husband’s family and community including denial of inheritance and land rights, poverty, social discrimination, loneliness and depression, confiscation of their property among others. Dehumanizing widowhood rights. Most of the time the death of a loved one is the least of a widows worries.

The main objective of our organisation is to empower widows to break the cycle poverty. Empowering all widows economically and socially, can help to boost economy and social relations, not only to their families but also in the society and the nation at large, and consequently break the cycle of poverty as a means of achievement to Widows Empowerment Initiative for Africa.

Widows in Africa live in abject poverty and discrimination, especially where there are no interventions to support or create safe space for them, besides their challenges of decision-matter of resettlement. Children of poor widows are usually unable to continue education due to financial constraints, leaving them more vulnerable to force labour and human trafficking.

Although accurate information is limited, it has been estimated that there are some 285 million widows around the world, with over 115 million of them living in deep poverty. Data on women’s status are often not disaggregated by marital status, so at every level of gender statistics, from national to global, widows are not visible. Yet we know that many elderly widows face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, based on their gender, age, rural location or disability. Others are still young when they lose their husbands, perhaps as a result of conflict or because they were married as children to a much older man. These women face a long lifetime of widowhood. 

Along with the shock of losing a spouse, the situation for widows is often compounded by stigma and social isolation. In many Africa countries, widows are stripped off their rights to assets such as land, income and property. Without access to social protection, they face destitution.

According to the World Bank Group’s Women, Business and the Law 2016 report, out of 173 countries, 90 per cent have at least one law limiting women’s economic participation, including constraints on their ability to inherit or own land. Repealing these discriminatory laws is not only ethical for Widows in Africa.

Widows must be empowered to support themselves and their families. This also means addressing social stigmas that create exclusion, and discriminatory or harmful practices, such as those in Nigeria where a widow can be required to undergo a period of isolation and imprisonment, purification ceremonies to “cut the link” with her deceased husband, and pressed to remarry. 

Mercy Olu is a widow from Nigeria. She supports a household of 15, both children and grandchildren, despite the limited economic opportunities in the Delta region that reflect the ongoing crises and prevalent gender inequality. Mercy is just one of thousands of widows around the world who struggle to claim their equal human rights after the loss of a husband; an event that  lead to enduring poverty for her and this could lead to abject poverty widows and their families faced.