ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Land deals, dispossession, and the threat to peasant livelihood in northern ghana

The chapter discusses how the security of communal lands tenureship and the livelihood choices that such land entitlements confer on peasants in northern Ghana are being undermined by new forms of land deals. This is done against a background unlike the past. Northern Ghana is witnessing an influx of transnational organizations that are interested in establishing jatropha plantations as biofuel feedstock. The implications of direct land deals between traditional leaders and transnational corporations, which invariably involve large tracts of land and the livelihoods of the peasantry, is a matter of interest in this work. The vulnerability of traditional leaders caused by their weak institutional capacity and poverty push them to enter into agreements that they do not understand. The chapter examines both sides of the debate pertaining to the outcomes of the land transactions on livelihoods in light of the poverty in northern Ghana. © 2015, IGI Global. All rights reserved.

Source: UG
Land governance and access dynamics in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana

The past decade’s petroleum industry-related urban expansion has fueled a growing demand for land with increasing conflicts in Sekondi-Takoradi. With an emphasis on land conflict resolution processes, it is argued that whether conflicts are resolved by traditional authorities or the court, actors with advantageous combinations of economic resources, power, or state support, are likely to win. Characterized by legal pluralism, rapid urbanization and intensifying land pressure, land conflicts remain unresolved. Formal institutional mechanisms must be reformed and improved to safeguard the land interests of vulnerable social groups who often lose out in informal land access negotiations processes.

Source: UG
Land Governance and Conflict in West Africa through Interdisciplinary Empirical Lenses

This working paper addresses the following central questions: (i) How does the commodification of land challenge distinctions between rural and urban spaces? (ii) What new forms of differentiation emerge from commodification, for example the alienation of land markets from land governance regimes? (iii) How does commodification help our understanding of the resilience of custom and egalitarianism? (iv) How useful are property rights frameworks, whether customary, statutory or new forms of tenure, for land management and sustainability? Four authors, members of the MIASA Interdisciplinary Fellow Group (IFG 6) on Land Governance, applied ethnographic and cross-sectional research methods to examine case studies in Ghana, Mali and Senegal. This research contributes to an understanding of the perceptions, discourses and practices relating to land commodification and conflicts, as well as the way in which endogenous perceptions of access to land in West Africa are expressed and adapt to changing circumstances.

Source: UG
Land grabbing, land rights and the role of the courts.

Rights-based approaches to development tend to emphasise human rights, the right to participate in decision making, and rights to social services and goods such as water, housing, and even the city. They tend to exclude land, while land rights research tends to be focused on land law and law courts without analysing ‘the right to land’. It is possible for the courts to play a key role to shape the current transformation of property relations, especially when private property appears to be failing its supposed role as a social trust but, as we show with an original institutional economics methodology, data from court cases, and results from Afrobarometer surveys, the contribution of the courts can be severely constrained. Existing approaches to contesting land grabs – centred on (a) popular protests (b) international guidelines and (c) national laws from the executive and the legislature – are inadequate without the courts, but what the courts can do is contingent on how well cases are presented, the orientation of judges, the resources of plaintiffs and, most fundamentally, the nature of their working rules.

Source: UG
Land tenure and differential soil fertility management practices among native and migrant farmers in Wenchi, Ghana: Implications for interdisciplinary action research

In the past, farmers in the forest-savannah transitional agro-ecological zone of Ghana relied on the bush fallow system for maintaining the productivity of their farmland. However, in recent years population growth-induced pressure on land has increased and farmers have developed various other strategies for improving the productivity of their farmlands. Such strategies have been identified in the context of an interdisciplinary action research project and include rotations with cassava (Manihot esculents), pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) and cowpea (Vigna unguiculata). Using a social science model for understanding technical farming practices, this article explains the differential adoption of these locally developed soil fertility management strategies. It transpires that native and migrant communities are captured in a social dilemma situation, which has negative consequences for soil fertility in that promising innovations are not utilized optimally. Based on this research experience, this article concludes with a discussion of the implications for co-operation between natural and social scientists in the context of interactive action research. It is argued, amongst other things, that the essence of such co-operation lies in the critical questioning and influencing of each other's key assumptions and disciplinary research agendas.

Source: UG
Land Tenure Security, Investment and the Environment in Ghana

Using a nationally representative data obtained from a survey, this study attempts to examine empirically two main issues: first, the causal relationship between land tenure security and investment and secondly, the impact of tenure security (land rights) on environmental degradation. Analysis of the results indicates that investment in farmlands in Ghana is low and appears not to enhance tenure security and that the reverse causation of tenure security enhancing investment seems non-existent. This implies that agricultural investments in the country are not security-induced and that investment is not an important determinant of tenure security. However, tenure security appears to be an incentive for investment in that when endogeneity was not controlled, tenure security had a positive and significant impact on investment though the result is not robust. This implies that farmers with tenure security are more likely to invest in their lands, which may eventually lead to higher productivity. Furthermore, our results indicate that tenure security (land rights) has no significant impact on environmental degradation apart from the destruction of vegetation cover, which appears to be a major environmental problem in Ghana. General and specific policy recommendation aimed at improving tenure security and investment in land are explored.

Source: UG
Land types and sustainable cocoa production: Lessons from GIS application

Sustainable cocoa production demands a range of biophysical conditions of land. The paper reports on the levels of sustainability of cocoa production on different soil types under different tree cover intensities. Geographic Information System (GIS) analytical functionalities were extensively applied in the study. The spatial distribution of cocoa was modeled from geo-located samples, and related to tree cover generated from Landsat ETM+ image for 2000 and soils types. There was a strong spatial association between cocoa density-distribution surface, soil types and tree cover. It was observed that soils that are naturally suitable for cocoa were still supporting extensive cocoa farms, whereas unsuitable lands that were initially cultivated with cocoa had only remnant or no cocoa farms. The outcome of this study indicates that decisions for cocoa cultivation should be informed by accurate information on the suitability of lands for sustainable production.

Source: UG
Land use and land cover change detection and prediction based on CA-Markov chain in the savannah ecological zone of Ghana

Environmental problems have accompanied the accelerated land use and land cover change (LULCC), yet few local level studies make an attempt to assess the dynamics of LULCC. This work employed GIS and remote sensing to quantify the past and predict future dynamics of LULCC based on the synergy Cellular Automata (CA) - Markov Chain Model (MCM). The results revealed that agricultural land in the Bongo district witnessed the greatest expan sion from 10.03% to 27.17% of total area from 1990 to 2019, while wooded savannah area witnessed the greatest decline from a share of 42.26% to 15.51% of total area from 1990 to 2019. In the Kassena-Nankana West (KNW) district, shrub and tree savannah and agricultural land expanded from 32.91% to 54.2% and 9.44% to 18.16% of the total area, respectively, at the expense of wooded savannah area (-32.9% of total area) between 1990 and 2019. Future predictions based on prevailing socio-economic development demonstrate that the observed trend would continue till the 2050 period. In the Bongo district, the settlement area will witness the highest proportion of net increase in total area (5.63 km2) at the expense of wooded savannah (-11.26 km2) between 2019 and 2050. Conversely, in the KNW district, the shrub and tree savannah area will experience the highest proportion of net gain in total area (156.02 km2) at the expense of wooded savannah area (-111.49 km2) between 2019 and 2050. This result is an indication that the synergy CA-MCM have effectively captured the spatiotemporal trend in LULCC in this study.

Source: UG
Land Use and Landscape Structural Changes in the Ecoregions of Ghana

In recent years, land use (LU) and landscape structure in ecoregions around the world have been faced with enormous pressures, from rapid population growth to urban sprawl. A preliminary account of changes in land cover (LC) and landscape structure in the ecoregions of Ghana is missing from the academic and research literature. The study therefore provides a preliminary assessment of the changing LU and landscape structure in the ecoregions of Ghana, identifying the causes and assessing their impact on land-based resources, and on urban and agricultural development. LU/LC maps produced from 30 m resolution Landsat TM5 in 1990 and ETM+ in 2000 were classified into dominant land cover types (LCTs) and used to survey the changing landscape of Ghana. LC-changemap preparation was done with change detection extension “Ver¨anderung” (v3) in an ArcGIS 10.1 environment. At the class level, Patch Analyst version 5.1 was used to calculate land use (LU) statistics and to provide landscape metrics for LU maps extracted from the satellite imagery. The results showed that commonly observed LCCs in the ecoregions of Ghana include conversion of natural forest land to various forms of cultivated lands, settlements, and open land, particularly in closed and open forest and savannah woodland. The dominant LU types in the ecoregions of Ghana are arable lands, which increased by 6168.98 km2. Forest and plantation LCTs decreased in area and were replaced by agricultural land, forest garden, and open land. Afforestation rarely occurred except in the rainforests. The mean patch size (MPS), ameasure of fragmentation, was generally reduced consistently from 1990 to 2000 in all the ecoregions. Similar results that indicated increased fragmentation were an increased number of patches (NumP) and the Shannon diversity index (SDI). Habitat shape complexity inferred ecoregions except for rainforest and wet evergreen. The SDI and Shannon evenness index (SEI) showed that habitat diversity was highest in the coastal savannah and the deciduous forest ecoregions. The main drivers of changes in the LUs and landscape structure are demand for land and land-based natural resources to support competing livelihoods and developmental activities in the different ecoregions.

Source: UG
Land Use Land Cover Change within Kakum Conservation Area in the Assin South District of Ghana, 1991-2015

Kakum Conservation Area is roughly 1187km2, extending over large portions of forest reserves in the Assin South District of Ghana. The district hosts the remaining biodiversity hotspots within highly fragmented rainforest of West Africa. Although the conservation has been gazetted as protected area, it has since been impacted by illegal chainsaw logging, expanding agricultural land use and built construction to meet the housing needs of the rapidly growing population of the district. However, there is paucity of data on the magnitude, rate and types of land cover change occurring in the district. This study seeks to address these by examining the magnitude, the rate and direction of change in land cover between 1991 and 2015. The study objective was achieved using supervised classification and post classification change detection of remotely sensed Landsat satellite imagery of the district taken in 1991, 2001 and 2015. The results show that, within the study period, the population of the area increased by 2.9%, thick forest decreased by 8.2km2, light forest increased by 5.3km2 and built environment increased by 2.9km2 per annum. These results are considered potential hindrance to sustainable development, including biodiversity conservation in the forest reserves and climate change mitigation in general. There is therefore need for measures to end deforestation and stimulate reforestation of the lost forest cover. The district needs to initiate an enquiry into the effectiveness of the current forest reserve management practices and sustainability of land use systems in the district.

Source: UG
Land Use Type Affects Butterfly Diversity: A Case Study Of The University Of Ghana, Main Campus, Legon

The present study investigates the effects of some climatic factors on insects associated with citrus orchards in two different agro-ecological zones in Ghana. The study showed that, climatic factors affected insects differently in different agro-ecological zones. There was a negative and highly significant (P˂0.01) correlation between insect abundance and rainfall in the Coastal Savannah zone whereas the correlation between mean temperature and insect abundance was negative and significant (P˂0.05) in the Semi-Deciduous Rain Forest zone. Numbers of insect species peaked differently in some months during the study period due to favourable climatic conditions for their reproduction, growth and activities. The month of February was most favourable for the insects in the Semi-Deciduous Rain Forest zone whiles January was most favourable for the Coastal Savannah zone. Similarly, some months were more favourable for pests of citrus in Ghana; January and February for Ceratitis ditissima and Leptoglossus sp. in both agro-ecological zones and, January and February for Achaea sp. in the Semi-Deciduous Rain Forest and Coastal Savannah respectively. The months of October and September were most favourable for Zonocerus variegatus in the Coastal Savannah zone and Semi-deciduous rain forest zone respectively during the study period. Even though the two different agro-ecological zones had common pests, the proportions and peak periods however varied. The differences are crucial with regards to developing integrated pests management strategies to control insect pests of citrus in Ghana.

Source: UG
Land, Gender, and Class Relations in Ghana’s Cassava Frontier

Lands for domestic production in rural areas have increasingly shrunk and the rules of access have changed as corporate land grabs intensify in many parts of the Global South. These occurrences are outcomes of processes that are packaged in state policies that promote market intervention in agricultural production. In Ghana, state initiatives pro mote large-scale industrial cassava production in rural areas. This arti cle discusses land grabs in cassava frontier communities, their impacts on land access rules, and social relations. It is argued that while land, gender, and class relations change as a result of competition over, and commodification of, land resources, community institutions, namely chiefs and families, play significant roles that legitimize dispossession of social groups whose land-use rights are derived from other hierarchies. The changes in production relations in the communities are linked to processes linked to older commodity production. Similar changes have occurred at the household level as circuits of commodity production integrate within domestic production. The article highlights different struggles by women and migrants to renegotiate their access rules and their local citizenship status.

Source: UG
Land, Gender, and Food Security

Since 2008, a surge in large-scale land acquisitions, or land grabs, has been taking place in low- and middle-income countries around the globe. This contribution examines the gendered effects of and responses to these deals, drawing on nine studies, which include conceptual framing essays that bring in debates about human rights, studies that draw on previous waves of land acquisitions globally, and case studies that examine the gendered dimensions of land dispossession and loss of common property. Three key insights emerge: the evolving gender and land tenure literature provides valuable information for understanding the likely effects of land deals; some of the land deal issues transcend gender-equity concerns and relate to broader problems of dispossession and loss of livelihoods; and huge gaps remain in our knowledge of gender and land rights that require urgent attention and systematic integration of gender analysis into mainstream research

Source: UG
Landfill externalities and property values dilemma–emerging insights from three Ghanaian cities

Though debates about the negative impact landfill exerts on land and property values are by no means historically new, research into the case of developing countries has only recently begun. This article attempts to synthesise existing literature on the subject through the analysis of three case studies to enhance our understanding, especially the contextual conditions surrounding the relationship. Applying this theoretical framework to the disposal practices occurring in three cities in Ghana, this article offers insight into the culpability of landfills in negatively impacting property values. In an illuminating analysis, we argue that most engineered landfills in the country serve as a catalyst in correcting the ills of uncontrolled urbanisation (governance, attitudinal and financial constraints, etc.). We opine that landfills’ relationship with host communities must be understood in relation to our overall underdevelopment, coupled with the increasing economic and technical challenges shaping much of the country’s history. © 2017 The Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Source: UG
Landlords and Brokers: A West African Trading System (With a note on Kumasi Butchers)

In this summary article I am concerned firstly to generalise about the West African "landlord system of long-distance trade"; secondly to provide a little comparative material relating to an important cattle market, Kumasi, where the traditional credit – granting system has broken down; and thirdly to raise some points about the changing organisation of Hausa butchers, again with special reference to Kumasi.

Source: UG
Landscape and environmental influences on Mycobacterium ulcerans distribution among aquatic sites in Ghana

The Department of Parasitology conducts research into parasitic diseases of public health importance with the overall goal of reducing their transmission and the heavy disease burden that they impose on affected populations. The Department maintains focus on parasitic diseases in general. These include major diseases such as malaria, and others listed under the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) control initiative such as, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis, trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis.

Source: UG
Language and body in performance: Working across languages in the Ghanaian production i told you so

Language is central to any discussion of theatre, particularly in the African context where, due to the history of colonialism, many playwrights write in languages other than their own mother tongue. African actors are, consequently, faced with the challenge of performing in languages which may not be their first language. In a 2007 production of a local-language play adapted from the Concert Party tradition at the University of Ghana, the authors of this article noted an amazing presentation of powerful body movements on stage, which resonated very well with our student and faculty audiences. This production and its enthusiastic reception raised key questions regarding the effect a more familiar language medium has on the actor's body and movement on stage. Are there any limitations to the actor's art when they have to perform in a language that is not their mother tongue? How may these limitations, if any, be overcome? To what extent did the stylised movements associated with Concert Party contribute to the success of this production? How did this experiment impact on the student performers? This article probes these questions by exploring the relationships between spoken language, paralanguage, and body language in acting on stage. The authors held focus group discussions with student actors and directors to examine the issues involved. Students who had had major roles in English and in this particular production were further interviewed with a view to discovering any differences they might have felt in performing in their own mother tongue or in a more familiar language compared with in performing in English. The authors' findings are presented in this article. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Source: UG
Language and Identity construction in Nigerian Pentecostal Churches

The paper investigates how the creative appropriation of linguistic genres in the Nigerian Pentecostal discourses contributes to the construction of collective identity among its community of members. The objective is to analyse how religious identities and experiences are expressed, determined and shaped by sociolinguistic features like language shift, naming practice, greeting and address system; and the socio-cultural issues that underpin the production and communication of these identities. Using Fishman’s principles of Sociology of Religion and Language (Fishman, 2006), which sees religion as dynamic and utilitarian, data was purposively gathered from three multitudinous neo-Pentecostal churches in Nigeria. I argue that the pragmatic and multimodal operations of the churches contribute to their creating a definite identity of belongingness and otherness; thereby aiding their widespread and acceptance by Nigerians and non-Nigerians.

Source: UG
Language and reality in Ladé Worsonu’s poetry

This paper attempts to characterize the human experience that the Ghanaian poet Ladé Wosornu presents in his poetry: man's search for purity of heart and mind; a state of sublimity which, the poet argues, a man can attain if he is able to rise above the trappings of the physical world and journey into himself. The analysis focuses on five of Ladé Wosornu's poems selected from the collection Journey Without End and Other Poems (1997). The paper argues that Wosornu conceptualizes the non-physical in terms of and on the basis of the physical; and through his use of centripetalizing language presents the mind as a theatre of war between human perception of events outside the "body" and "human" experience within the body. Attaining sublimity then is transcending the inner conflicts through moments of transcendental meditation.

Source: UG