Kenya: Court makes landmark ruling on women's right to husbands' land

In 1981, the Kieni East Divisional Land Control Board endeavoured to make an estranged wife — Margaret Mumbi — the joint owner of 37 acres of prime agricultural land in Naromoru settlement scheme. Little did the board know that a woman could not sue her husband over land whose acquisition she did not contribute to materially during his lifetime. Twenty six years later, the Court of Appeal, in support of a High Court decision in 2002, says the land control board has no power to award land.