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Improving tenure security for the poor in Africa: Ghana country case study

Towards the improvement of tenure security for the poor in Ghana: Some thoughts and observations

Year of publication 2006

Pages 35 p.

Author Sarpong, G.A.;Land and Water Division

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Document

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) This paper provides an overview of the land tenure situation in Ghana. It focuses on the rural poor in terms of their access to natural resources, their vulnerability to major threats and the causes of their tenure insecurity. It also suggests approaches to securing property rights as a means for improving their livelihoods. Activities to enhance tenure security for the poor and vulnerable in Ghanaian rural communities require a comprehensive review of laws on the rights of women, protection of rights of the rural communities in the event of compulsory land acquisitions and enhancement of tenure security through formalization and registration. The paper also advocates recognition of secondary rights as part of a comprehensive rural programme on formalization of holdings and as the prerequisite for any land titling programme.

Language English

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    The study aims to clarify the various issues regarding land security of poor and other marginalized groups in Malian rural areas. It looks into questions relating to how poor and vulnerable groups obtain access to land and natural resources, and what factors cause their exclusion. It analyzes existing methods for formalizing land rights and land transactions and their impacts on the poor. Specific attention is given to the practical organization of the procedures for formalization and recording land rights. Any study of “land security” requires knowing whose rights are to be secured and protected, from whom or what they are to be secured, and how and why they are to be secured. The majority of the rural population in Mali is poor. Thus, this paper approaches the issue of land from the rural perspective with particular focus on the more underprivileged rural groups. Based on literature review and field research, the study i) examines modes of access to land and natural resources in M ali and their effects on the land tenure situations of poor and vulnerable groups; and ii) analyses the methods used for securing access to land and natural resources for those groups.
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    Improving tenure security for the poor in Africa: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda - Case Study
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    This paper identifies the key issues of land tenure security for the rural poor, vulnerable and marginalized in the East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The report finds that most of these issues are common across the three countries, both in terms of the challenges that the communities face and imperatives that inform policy interventions and responses. In all three countries, customary and statutory systems operate side by side and, in all three, there is a tendency for policy and legislative frameworks to privilege the modern systems of property relations over traditional ones, even as national rhetoric indicates recognition and support for the latter. The paper concludes that formalization has not always benefited the rural poor. Instead, an elite minority has tended to benefit from reforms while the majority of the poor and vulnerable end up worse off as institutions and systems that supported their livelihoods and gave them a sense of security are marginalized and replaced by modern institutions.
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    Improving tenure security for the poor in Africa
    Framework paper for the Legal Empowerment Workshop, Sub-Saharan Africa
    2006
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    Most of the world’s poor work in the “informal economy” – outside of recognized and enforceable rules. Thus, even though most have assets of some kind, they have no way to document their possessions because they lack formal access to legally recognized tools such as deeds, contracts and permits. FAO, with donor funding from Norway, has undertaken a set of activities for “Improving tenure security of the rural poor” in order to meet the needs of FAO member countries and, in turn, support the C ommission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) – the first global anti-poverty initiative focusing on the link between exclusion, poverty and law, looking for practical solutions to the challenges of poverty, aiming to make legal protection and economic opportunity the right of all, not the privilege of the few. This paper aims to suggest answers to this penetrating question about land tenure and the poor in Africa: Why, when so much is known and so much seems to be done, does so little change? For this purpose, a framework has been developed that can be used to prioritize and explore the issues within a coherent and recognizable context that provides a practical as well as theoretical perspective.
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