Exploring the “implementation gap” in land registration: How it happens that Ghana’s official registry contains mainly leaseholds

Zaid Abubakari, Christine Richter and Jaap Zevenbergen

Land Use Policy, 2018, vol. 78, issue C, 539-554

Abstract: The mismatch between customary law and statutory law is central in the ongoing land tenure discourse in Africa. Accordingly, differences between customary land rights and statutory land rights have commonly been identified to undermine inclusive land rights recognition and subsequent registration. However, there is less discussion about how existing alignments between customary land rights and statutory land rights are affected by implementation processes within and outside of land registration organizations. This paper looks at the case of Ghana where the existing law on land registration provides for the registration of diverse customary land rights, but ambiguity and contradictions among laws made at different times as well as practices of implementation of the law often result in the registration of only leasehold titles while neglecting other customary land rights. This creates an implementation gap which precludes the holders of lesser rights from registration and also reduces rights of usufructs to leaseholds. This qualitative study draws on document review and initial fieldwork in Ghana in two regions characterized by different land governance structures to investigate the nature of this implementation gap and the factors that explain it. Based on literature these factors relate to (1) legal simplifications versus real complexities; (2) administrative adaptations of the law; and (3) administrative capacity.

Keywords: Implementation gap; Law; Customary land rights; Statutory land rights; Land registration; Ghana (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837718304174
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:lauspo:v:78:y:2018:i:c:p:539-554

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.07.011

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().