Margibi County, May 7 -- Residents of this community have been celebrating the last few months. After decades fighting the French-owned rubber company Salala that set up here in 1959, they finally have official ownership of their land.

For decades, the plantation has expanded on the town's eleven thousand acres of land, evicting families as it went. Now the community says it will have control of how the company operates.

"We are happy," he says. "We have right over our land now," said Fahn Kolleh, the 74-year-old town chief. Salala's agreement with the government ends in 2029. "I told them I know my rights now and I am not under them."

Yamah Keselee sings with joy as she digs cassava. Women had been excluded from land ownership before ...