The Contested Politics of Intergenerational Land and Gender Justice in Northern Ghana

Abstract

To what extent do recent policy efforts to reform land administration and agricultural systems in Ghana consider intergenerational and gender equity and justice? Since the late 1990s, the World Bank and the Ghanaian government have been focused on the harmonization of customary and statutory land systems and the modernization of agriculture in Ghana with the stated twin goals of poverty alleviation and improving women’s access to land. In contrast to such land reform efforts that facilitate individual land registry and land commodification, the source of land security within Ghana’s Indigenous systems of governance is enshrined in the principle of Land as an intergenerational trust held together by the ancestors, the living, and the future generations. This article highlights how the reorganization of Ghana’s land system through Land Administration Projects funded by the World Bank and Land Act 1036, as well as an upsurge in legal and illegal gold mining in the Upper East Region, are intensifying power inequities and land conflicts. The article thus finds that recent efforts to reform land and agricultural systems—while they may be well-intentioned—may in fact exacerbate rural poverty, conflict, and undermine women’s and youth’s livelihoods in northern Ghana. We also outline avenues to address the shrinking commons, through appreciating the ecological and intergenerational dependence of humans on Nature and enshrining future generations and Nature with legal rights.