How and why chiefs formalise land use in recent times: the politics of land dispossession through biofuels investments in Ghana

Festus Boamah

Review of African Political Economy, 2014, vol. 41, issue 141, 406-423

Abstract: In the current land deals debate, land dispossession is often attributed to exploitative acts of agricultural investors. However, the role of equally active actors in the making of land deals such as chiefs, who customarily are custodians of land, does not feature prominently in the debate. The paper shows that the recent surge in large-scale land deals in Ghana corresponds with chiefs' pre-existing motivation to re-establish authority over land for two reasons: firstly, to formalise the use of 'stool land' to create rural development opportunities; secondly, to formalise boundaries of 'stool land' to avert potential future land litigations. Social groups lacking recognition from chiefs therefore often lose land, whereas land areas of those persons recognised by chiefs are protected, sometimes even regardless of their 'citizenship' identity in project villages. The author argues that an understanding of how local social institutions and politics mediate investment in land will enrich analyses of processes of land dispossession.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03056244.2014.901947 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revape:v:41:y:2014:i:141:p:406-423

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CREA20

DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2014.901947

Access Statistics for this article

Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

More articles in Review of African Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().