Urban Land Policies in Ghana: A Case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

This nomenclature is by no means universal. Asante (1965, p.851), for example, classifies land in Ghana into three types, namely stool, family, and individual. Sittie (2006, p.3) classifies land in Ghana into two: however she calls the two types ‘customary and public land’. ‘Stool land’, according to the Administration of Lands Act, 1962 is “land controlled by any person for the benefit of the subjects or members of a stool, clan, company or community as the case may be and all land in the Upper and Northern regions other than land vested in the President” (Asante 1965, p.882).

So called because of the centrality of the idea that property rights would evolve from community rights to individual rights (See also Firmin-Sellers 1996)

Stylistically, the paper uses the terms ‘Gold Coast’ and ‘Ghana’ interchangeably (following Howard 1978). There are two reasons why this style is adopted. Gold Coast referred to only one part of the colony ruled by the British (the rest were Ashanti and the Northern Territory which were initially administered separately). Second, the use of the two names interchangeably stresses the continuity of the forces that have impacted land tenure from colonialism till date.

Note that producing for the world market started before the institution of the colonial state. However, the formal institution of the colonial state and the element of coercion accentuated production for the external market (Howard 1980, p. 69)

Chiefs in Southern Ghana wear royal sandals as one traditional symbol of their authority.

The name has been recently changed to ‘Ministry of Land and Natural Resources’.

It is not clear what is the historical antecedent of this phrase. However, as early as 1954, when the eminent housing expert Charles Abrams visited Ghana for the first time, he used the phrase ‘Frozen assets’ to describe the practice of building incrementally in which building materials had to be accumulated over a long time before sufficient quantity was obtained for building purposes (See, Taper 1980, p.50).

Except the Town and Country Planning Department (TCPD) and the Office of the Administrator of Stool Lands (OASL).

To assess the representativeness of the sample, it is useful to compare it with broader national data on the occupational structure. This juxtaposition is rendered difficult because the Ghana Statistical Service uses a slightly different industrial classification in its statistical compendiums. However, the Data User’s Guide published by GLSS (2000), especially pp. 188–194, suggests that the GLSS classifies civil servants as part of ‘clerical and related workers’, who constitute 7.0 per cent of the total population of people employed in various occupations in Ghana. GLSS classifies commercial and real estate workers as part of ‘sales workers’, who constitute 8.6% of the labour force in Ghana. Security workers are part of ‘service workers’, who constitute 4.3% of the labour force. Education workers are part of the ‘professional/technical workers’, who constitute 8.3% of the labour force. Business executives and office workers are part of the ‘administrative/management’ occupation which constitutes 0.4% of the labour force while those people in the labour force who work in the agricultural occupation constitute 50.8% of the labour force (GLSS 2006, p.58). Those people who work in the informal economy constitute 51.0% of the labour force. GLSS classifies housewives as part of ‘(female) contributing family workers’, who constitute 28.5% of the currently employed population. An estimated 3.6% of the labour force is unemployed (GLSS 2008).

Sharecropping in Ghana usually takes the form of abunu or abusa. In the case of the former, a landowner receives half of the harvest of a farm in exchange for leasing his/her land to the farmer. In the case of abusa, the landowner gets a third of the harvest of the farm as his/her reward for foregoing the use of the land for the farming season. It usually arises between a landowning community and a stranger, rather than between a man and his wife (For a discussion of how this arrangement operates, see Woodman 1996, pp. 115–133). The relationship between husbands and wives in cocoa communities should be seen as a situation where wives and husbands have their respective farms but may help each other in return for some ‘payment’.

PNDCL 111 has changed the situation a little by providing how the estate must be shared in law. However, in practice, the reverence for tradition, administrative lapses in the enforcement of the law, and gaps such as the silence of the law on polygamous marriages inhibit the effectiveness of the law (See Fenrich and Higgins 2002 for detailed analysis).

The passage of the Lands Commission Act 787 which brings all institutions under one umbrella is commendable because it could end the waste of time and resources involved negotiating the labyrinthine land registration processes, involving the land sector agencies which are located in different places. Also it could potentially reduce the overlapping roles of these land sector agencies.