Land reforms and poverty : the impacts of land reforms on poor land users in the Nkoranza South Municipality, Ghana

The Government of Ghana began the implementation of the Land Administration Project (LAP) in 2003 as an effort to elaborate on the broad thrusts of the National Land Policy (NLP), which was approved in January 1999. The LAP focuses on facilitating access to land, ensuring security of title to land and enhancing institutional capacity for efficient and effective land administration. A decade into the implementation of the NLP and LAP this study sought to examine the impacts of land reforms on the land access, use rights and livelihoods of poor land users. The study uses field data gathered through in-depth interviews, observations and focus group discussions from the Nkoranza South Municipality (NSM) to explore the ability of women farmers, pastoralists and migrant farmers to access, use and manage land resources under the emerging “agency system” of land governance. The study also examined the regimes governing land access and use of the commons for grazing by pastoralists. The study establishes that although communal dynamics play a role in shaping land rights changes, current changes in land rights are the result of a land reform system that exposes close-knit communal land resources to metropolitan capital investments and transnational land deals. It further indicates that land reforms, pursued as silo developmental interventions, as is the case of the NSM case study, are incapable of alleviating poverty and the multiple livelihood needs of the poor. As such, it is recommended that land reforms be pursued as part of integrated development interventions, if poverty reduction remains a relevant goal of such initiatives. Furthermore, evidence from the field data suggests that the Nkoranza cosmovision of land as exhibiting features of a gift, a commodity and a sacred object should constitute the defining variables in any attempt to create locally viable land tenure systems. This entails incorporating the customs of the local people into the land reform processes. Finally, it is pointed out that state policies over land should seek to sustain communal practices, land use dynamics and cultures by supporting land tenure stabilisation and increasing voice and accountability over land use decision making