investment, economic activity and measures of household welfare. Finally, Section 6 provides the concluding remarks and discusses potential avenues for future work.

# **2. Land Tenure in Ghana**

In Ghana, land is categorized into four different types: stool, family, state-owned and freehold. Stool and family land constitute about 78 percent of all land while state-owned and freehold land form the remaining 20 percent and 2 percent respectively (Deininger, 2003; Kuntu-Mensah, 2006; Awuah et al., 2013). With regards to stool and family land, the Ghanaian legal framework allows for customary freehold, stranger usufruct rights, sharecropping and leasehold of less than 100 years to be held by individuals. The Ghanaian Land Title Registration Act of 1985 specifically permits these rights to be formally registered so that any interests held by individuals on any parcel of land can be protected (Sittie, 2006).<sup>2</sup> However, poor record keeping emanating from the oral nature of transactions associated with land controlled by stools and families,<sup>3</sup> process complexities as well as other bureaucratic hurdles inhibited title registration in the past. Additionally, the monetary cost of titling land is relatively high and often connected with extensive time lags (Awuah et al., 2013).<sup>4</sup> Population growth, urbanization and expansion of commercial agriculture over the past decades have increased land scarcity in Ghana. These developments pose challenges to the traditional way in which land ownership and land use rights have been managed even in the face of the regulatory advances discussed above. Traditionally, chiefs oversaw the allocation of land to ensure equity in access to land among members of the group (usually defined by descent) with rights to that land (Udry, 2010; Onoma, 2010). The allocative mechanism is an important resource for traditional leaders, and the allocations can reflect their political interests (Acemoglu, Reed & Robinson 2014). These include a mix of patronage, the imperative to satisfy claims that are seen as legitimate by important

> 2 While intended to ease the land registration process, the Land Title Registration Act from 1985 was not a dramatic deviation from prevailing practices and, instead, was intended to address the weaknesses of land related laws. Prior to the act (and the accompanying law: PNDC Law 152), there already existed legal instruments which supported deeds registration in Ghana (Zevenbergen, 1998). The operation of the deeds registry helped to identify transactions related to land but failed to confer title on the individual who held the deed. Cadastral maps which accompanied such deeds were also frequently inaccurate or, in some instances, not required and thus missing (Kuntu-Mensah, 2006). Therefore, the system failed to address the issues of multiple claims to the same parcel of land.

> 3 To improve efficiency of record keeping within the customary system (stool and family lands) the Customary Land Secretariat was established in 2004 with 38 branches throughout the country. Although potentially beneficial the state of operation of the various branches have been mixed – some functioning fully whilst others are yet to take off.

> 4 To address these challenges, legislative reforms were initiated in 1987. More specifically, these reforms were meant to introduce a system that allowed the registration of land titles across the country in a stepwise manner. This system was designed to operate side by side with the deeds registration processes that were already in place. Naturally, the main objective of the title registration system was to confer title to the holders of the certificate and assure the holders that in times of any threat to their rights, the government will ensure that they are protected. Any title issued under this law could only be nullified by a court of law (Sittie, 2006).

5