Social Forces and the Politics of Land Tenure Reform in Ghana: A case study of the Land Administration Project (LAP)

Over the decades following the neoliberal revolution in the 1980s, several reform packages were advocated across the world but mainly in developing countries in order to improve economic growth, good governance and development. Among such reforms advocated in Ghana was the need to restructure the country‘s land tenure system to make it efficient and responsive to the needs of the poor. Consequently, a Land Administration Project (LAP) was approved in 2003 by the World Bank and other multilateral institutions to assist Ghana overcome the problems confronting its land sector. The LAP is a long term project to be implemented over 15-25 years with an initial pilot phase ending this year. This paper sets out to deconstruct the LAP with the view to understanding the reasons behind its genesis and the role various social forces and interest play in it. Using a theoretical tool based on the new institutionalisms, the paper argues that the design and implementation of the LAP has been influenced by mainstream economists thinking that land tenure problems and the inability to use land as collateral results in land market distortions and have adverse effects on economic growth and productivity. The assumption therefore is that reforming the Ghana land tenure system in the nature of the LAP will engender efficiency and equity in land access and have a positive effect on poverty reduction and development. However, the paper also argues that the issue of land tenure reform in Ghana transcends the efficiency question to include issues of power politics and social positions, something which the LAP seemingly glosses over in the Ghanaian context, thus subordinating issues of equity to the market. As a result, the LAP is playing into the interest of powerful social forces both within and outside the state and its decentralised local bodies. This situation has the tendency to further the concentration of wealth and power on dominant social forces while condemning other minor social forces into landlessness or near landlessness and thus deepening poverty and social exclusion instead of stemming it. The study therefore uncovers the imperative for further research into the analysis on social relations and ways of genuinely involving weaker social forces into the LAP implementation process beyond work/talk shops. As well, further research is recommended to understand the impact of systematic land titling and registration on the poor and the cost implication of this. The issue of transparency and accountability of chiefs and how to make the Customary Land Secretariats (CLS) responsive to citizens‘ concerns also requires further exploration. -- Relevance to Development Studies -- The importance of land in poverty reduction cannot be overemphasized. Land provides a source of livelihood for majority of poor people in developing countries and has the potential to stimulate economic growth. The need to reform land tenure to ensure its equitable access and efficient use in production is therefore crucial to development. However, getting land tenure programs wrong could have the effect of deepening poverty and social exclusion. It is therefore important to study such programs to understand how they can enhance poverty reduction while avoiding the concentration of wealth and power on few influential social forces.