The politics of customary land rights transformation in peri-urban Ghana: Powers of exclusion in the era of land commodification

Highlights

• Customary land tenure is evolving from a negotiable to an exclusionary system.

• Rapid urbanisation and land commodification are transforming customary land rights.

• Customary custodians are re-interpreting usufructuary rights into permissive rights.

• Customary authority, formal planning and the market constitute exclusionary weapons.

• The flexibility of customary tenure can be manipulated to benefit the powerful.

Abstract

The scholarly discourse on the transformation of customary land tenure systems in SSA is advancing theoretically and empirically. This paper contributes to this evolving debate by drawing upon qualitative case studies of mundane practices of land delivery in Tamale and Techiman, Ghana to understand the powers underpinning the transformation of customary land rights. In the wake of rapid urbanisation, processes of land commodification are intensifying, resulting in the re-interpretation and re-negotiation of customary land tenure systems and exclusions in peri-urban areas in Ghana. Chiefly, state and market powers are mutually reinforcing in the politics of exclusion and the transformation of customary land rights in peri-urban Ghana. Contrary to current international land policy trends that laud the adaptability and negotiability of customary tenure, the evidence in this paper shows that in contexts of rapid urbanisation and unequal power relations, customary tenure regimes can be manipulated to produce exclusionary outcomes. Therefore, the paper concludes that rather than local custom and formal planning serving as regulatory functions to protect the public interest; they emerge as powers of exclusion acting in synergy with market forces to displace usufructuary interest holders.

Introduction

The scholarly literature on land policy in sub Saharan Africa (SSA) has seen a renewed interest in customary land tenure systems. This interest gained momentum following the formal shift in position of the World Bank and other international development agencies from viewing customary tenure systems as inhibiting agricultural productivity and modernisation to extolling their flexible and adaptive nature. Consequently, the current influential approach to the land question in Africa emphasises the recognition and strengthening of customary tenure systems and integrating them with formal land administration practices to ensure social justice, equitable land management, and tenure security (Amanor, 2012; Deininger and Binswanger, 1999; Knight, 2010; Kombe and Kreibich, 2000). These theoretical policy prepositions about customary land tenure notwithstanding, empirical findings in many rapidly urbanising secondary cities in SSA show that customary land rights are under siege and becoming inegalitarian. In peri-urban areas, urbanisation engenders land conversion and speculation; triggers individualised relations in land; and challenges indigenous rights of access to land under customary tenure (Kombe and Kreibich, 2000; Ubink, 2008c; Ubink and Amanor, 2008). Unfortunately, enormous efforts in the academic scholarship on land tenure reform in Africa have been channelled towards countering hegemonic modernists’ positions on customary tenure systems as rigid and outdated to reveal their adaptability, ambiguity, and flexibility to the neglect of who benefits and who loses from the negotiability of customary tenure systems.

In Ghana, where land administration falls at the twilight between customary and state tenure systems, claims to land rights are continuously re-interpreted and re-defined particularly in peri-urban areas. Various mutations have occurred in the interpretations of ownership and use rights to land whilst contestations over revenues from land transactions are not uncommon (Abudulai, 2002; Ubink, 2008a; Yaro, 2012). In many rapidly urbanising towns, increased demand, and value of land, emanating from rapid urban population growth has put intense pressure on land for residential development. This has precipitated the widespread conversion of hitherto communal agricultural/vacant lands by chiefs² and other traditional authorities into urban uses for allocation to prospective developers in line with neoliberal modernisation forces. This leads to growing commodification of land engendering exclusion in access to land especially among weaker social groups such as the youth, women and people with low incomes. Studies by Amanor (2010); Boni (2008) and Kidido et al. (2017) have revealed how in the context of the land commercialisation and commodification, the youth find it difficult to access agricultural land through customary modes of access such as gifts and inheritance because of competition from residential development and market modes of access. Similarly, in patrilineal societies in northern Ghana, women have also been shown by some studies on customary land tenure in Wa (Kuusaana et al., 2013) and Tamale (Yaro, 2010) to face various forms of exclusion in access to customary land. Women in these societies are seen to hold secondary rights to land and their rights of access through inheritance are dependent on social ties with primary right holders (men). Even though women can acquire land through lease, purchase or tenancy, financial constraints due to low incomes, poverty and limited possession of productive resources significantly prevent them and other low income earners from acquiring land through the market particularly in the wake of land commodification and rapid urbanisation in peri-urban areas. Yaro (2010) also argues for Tamale Ghana that women are excluded from the proceeds of land sales which would provide them with the needed financial capital to undertake investments.

Within the broader debate on the land question in SSA, this paper contributes by highlighting the changing claims to peri-urban customary land rights and the powers behind these transformations in the wake of rapid urbanisation and land commodification. The relevance of the research thus goes beyond peri-urban Ghana to many sub-Saharan African countries where land commodification has resulted in the transformation of traditional systems of land tenure. Consequently, the paper deepens understanding of local power dynamics and the nuances of customary land management under contexts of rapid urbanisation. Such empirical insights provide a reality check on the outcomes of current land policies aimed at building on customary practices of land management in SSA. The discussions in this article focus on the established regime of customary land administration vis-à-vis the functional realities and situated practices observed on the ground. The article aims to answer two key questions: 1) how are customary regulations and practices of access to land changing? 2) What powers and legitimising discourses are employed by the key actors to initiate and sustain the transformation of customary land rights? Although the transformation of customary rights to land and the resultant displacement of community members in peri-urban Ghana is obvious from previous studies (Akaateba et al., 2018; Anaafo, 2015; Kuusaana and Eledi, 2015; Owusu, 2008; Ubink, 2008b, 2008a; Yaro, 2010), what is much less clear is how these transformations occur in different contexts and the various powers and discourses employed by the key actors. By examining empirical cases of local planning and land sub-division in two peri-urban settlements in Tamale and Techiman Ghana, this paper unpacks the dynamics of land rights transformation and the powers and legitimising discourses that are used to initiate and sustain such transformations.

Based on the evidence from the case study, this paper posits that traditional authority, land use regulation, and the market constitute powers of exclusion that facilitate peri-urban land rights transformation and the displacement of poor peri-urban residents from their farmlands. This calls into question the potential of hybrid land governance arrangements in securing land rights and ensuring equitable access to land for weaker social groups such as the youth, women and poor indigenes.