We examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in Akwapim, Ghana. We show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output. The intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual’s security of tenure over those specific plots and, in turn, to the individual’s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots.

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The Profits of Power: Land Rights and Agricultural Investment in Ghana

The current global land grab is causing radical changes in the use and ownership of land. The main process driving the land grab, or ‘foreignisation of space’, as highlighted in the media and the emerging literature is the production of food and biofuel for export in the aftermath of recent food and energy crises. However, there are several other processes driving the land rush. In this article I argue that an analytical framework that focuses on only one or two processes that drive the global land grab offers a narrow perspective on this complex process. It will be unable to take into account the full range and extent of agrarian and social changes that occur in light of the land grab and their strategic implications for poor people's livelihoods. An important starting point is to identify the broad processes driving the current land rush, and trace their structural and institutional origins. To do so, I identify and examine seven factors that are giving rise to radical changes in landownership and land ...

Globalisation and the foreignisation of space: seven processes driving the current global land grab

The paper proposes that reports of pervasive competition and conflict over land in sub-Saharan Africa belie a current image of negotiable and adaptive customary systems of landholding and land use but, instead, reveal processes of exclusion, deepening social divisions and class formation. Cases of ambiguous and indeterminate outcomes among claimants over land do occur, but the instances of intensifying conflict over land, deepening social rifts and expropriation of land beg for closer attention. More emphasis needs to be placed by analysts on who benefits and who loses from instances of ‘negotiability’ in access to land, an analysis that, in turn, needs to be situated in broader political economic and social changes taking place, particularly during the past thirty or so years. This requires a theoretical move away from privileging contingency, flexibility and negotiability that, willy-nilly, ends by suggesting an open field, to one that is able to identify those situations and processes (including commodification, structural adjustment, market liberalization and globalization) that limit or end negotiation and flexibility for certain social groups or categories.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1471-0366.2004.00080.x

Inequality and Social Conflict Over Land in Africa

The authors use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity. While they find some support for endogeneity of investment in trees, this is not the case for terraces. Transfer rights are unambiguously investment-enhancing. The large productivity effect of terracing implies that, even where households undertake investments to increase their tenure security, this may not be socially efficient. In Ethiopia, government action to increase tenure security and transferability of land rights can significantly enhance rural investment and productivity. This paper - a product of Rural Development, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to assess the impact of land policy on equity and productive development.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID636353_code384013.pdf?abstractid=636353&mirid=1

Tenure Security and Land-Related Investment: Evidence from Ethiopia

The study of collective action has matured dramatically since Mancur Olson challenged scholars by positing a general theory in his pathbreaking book on The Logic of Collective Action (1965). Olson's theoretical predictions related to the incapacity of individuals, except under limited conditions, to solve on their own what are now known as `collective action problems'. Olson argued that one characteristic of goods - that of exclusion - defined all public goods. In contemporary analysis, the problem of achieving exclusion of noncontributors has come instead to characterize all types of collective action problems. Multiple subtypes of collective action problems have been identified. One major class of collective action problems are referred to in contemporary literature as public goods. Another class are referred to as common-pool resources. Common-pool resources are characterized by difficulty of exclusion and subtractability of resource units and are threatened by overuse leading to congestion or even des...

How Types of Goods and Property Rights Jointly Affect Collective Action

The report is based on case studies in seven countries, and relies on new data to examine the relationship between land holding rights, and agricultural production. Land remains the most important source of economic livelihood, security, and social status in Sub-Saharan Africa. But the extent to which existing tenure rules, and practices influence agriculture, is unclear. The report further questions whether indigenous African land tenure systems, accord farmers sufficient security for long-term investment in agricultural production, and, examines as well the major effects of land registration and titling, on agricultural production. The study represent the first rigorous quantitative analysis of the relationship between land tenure security, and agricultural production in the context of contemporary political economies of African countries.

Steven Atsu

Papers

Searching for land tenure security in Africa