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Building on “Traditional” Land Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Rural Ghana: Adaptive or Anachronistic?
Version 1
: Received: 6 January 2021 / Approved: 8 January 2021 / Online: 8 January 2021 (10:31:29 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Asaaga, F.A. Building on “Traditional” Land Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Rural Ghana: Adaptive or Anachronistic? Land 2021, 10, 143. Asaaga, F.A. Building on “Traditional” Land Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Rural Ghana: Adaptive or Anachronistic? Land 2021, 10, 143.
Abstract
Despite the ongoing land administration reforms being implemented across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including Ghana as viable pathway to achieve tenure security and greater efficiency in land administration, the subject of land dispute resolution has received relatively less attention. Whereas customary tenure institutions play a central role in land administration (controlling ~80% of all land in Ghana), they remain at the fringes of the formal land dispute adjudicatory process. Recognizing the pivotal role traditional institutions as development agents and potential vehicles for promoting good land governance, recent discourse on land tenure have geared towards mainstreaming traditional land disputes institutions into the architecture of formal judicial process via alternative dispute resolution pathways. Yet little is known at least empirically as to the operations of traditional dispute resolution institutions in the contemporary context. This study therefore explores the importance of traditional dispute resolution institutions in the management of land-related disputes in southcentral and western Ghana. Drawing on data collated from 380 farming households operating 746 plots. The results show that contrary to the conventional thinking that traditional institutions are anachronistic and not fit for purpose, they remain strong and preferred forum for land dispute resolution (proving resilient and adaptable) given the changing socio-economic and tenurial conditions. Yet these forums have differing implications for different actors within the customary spheres accessing them. The results highlight practical ways for incorporating traditional dispute resolution in the overall land governance setup in Ghana and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. This has implications for redesigning context-specific and appropriate land-use policy interventions that address local land dispute resolution.
Keywords
Land dispute, customary land tenure, statutory land tenure, tenure security, Ghana, sub-Saharan Africa
Subject
Social Sciences, Area Studies
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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