Elias Danyi Kuusaana

Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies

Resource scarcity and insecurity due to climate change, coupled with ethnic, religious, and identity politics, have strained peaceful coexistence between farmers and herders in West and Central Africa over the last few decades. Violent farmer-herder clashes now pose a significant threat to security and stability in the Sahelian and savannah dryland...

Conflicts relating to chieftaincy succession are recurrent among some monarchies in Ghana, and scholars have extensively debated their causes, resolution, and peacebuilding approaches. There have, however, been limited studies into the role that local actors' acceptance or rejection of the selected method of dispute resolution plays in the resoluti...

Introduction The shea ecosystem provides critical ecosystem services. However, rapid peri-urbanization threatens the governance of peri-land and shea tree resources and poses multiple risks to urban and peri-urban households. Yet, studies on tree tenure in Ghana have focused on cocoa though shea possesses similar economic prospects. This study exam...

The global literature on the ownership of, access to and control over land for agricultural activities, specifically for cocoa production, reports on gender discrimination, which affects the productivity and wellbeing of women farmers. Yet, the relationship between changing tenure dynamics and women's access to land is inconclusive and blurred in m...

Land formalisation and commoditisation are influencing peri-urban growth in secondary cities. This notwithstanding, studies on peri-urbanisation have not prioritized secondary cities and how land transactions shape city expansion and engender livelihood diversification. Few perspectives in urban theory and practice are derived from such secondary c...

Increasingly, urban land use planning is getting more complex as limited urban spaces are continuously allocated among diverse land uses. From previous urban food system studies in Ghana, it has become apparent that large portions of urban land parcels are unsustainably converted to urban infrastructure. Hence, the sustainability of the food system...

Urban wetlands continue to provide essential ecosystem services to the urban populace and are largely seen as urban commons that need to be managed properly for continuous wise use of wetlands. Yet fewer studies have highlighted the characteristics as basis for the development of a typology to make it easy for differentiated and appropriate spatial...

To address the prevalence of farmer-herder conflicts, Ghana has recently adopted a national cattle ranching project to establish ranches. Through a qualitative approach, this study examines the performance of existing ranches in addressing farmer-herder conflicts and the feasibility of ranches under complex land tenure arrangements. In Northern Gha...

High mortgage repayment-to-income ratios and unavailability of adequate and secured collateral are major setbacks for low-income households in accessing housing finance. This notwithstanding, few studies have examined housing finance strategies that are available to low-income households within a secondary city context amidst the complexities of cu...

Higher-level competencies in adopting innovative land management approaches are becoming more critical in Africa amidst existing complex neo-liberalized land markets and globalization. In response to the exigencies of emerging land governance systems within Africa, many academic networks have been formed at various institutional and informal levels...

Land is a critical factor of production for improving the living conditions of people everywhere. The search for tools (or approaches or strategies or methods) for ensuring that land challenges are resolved in ways that quickly respond to local realities is what led to the development of the fit-for-purpose land administration. This article provide...

The process of urban change does not only occur on the outskirts of the city but also in the inner cities in the form of infilling and alterations to existing housing. An observed trend in most cities of the Global South is the concentration and development within the city centres. Using the Wa Municipality as case study, this study seeks to examin...

Africa and Africans’ response to the challenge of spearheading innovative research and in formulating comprehensive policies on land governance are very recent. Across the continent, the African Land Policy Centre (ALPC) has emphasized and prioritized knowledge acquisition and capacity development on land governance especially through its Network o...

Drawing from the literature on customary land governance, this study examined landowners’ motivations as well as challenges in the formation and operation of Land Management Committees (LMCs). Using multiple qualitative data collection approaches, it was found that, motivations for the formation of LMCs include creation of joint efforts to resolve...

Housing is considered a basic human need. Yet deficit housing supply plagues Ghana. Studies on housing concentrate mainly on offering accommodation that neglects the problem of its affordability. As a result, this study examines factors influencing housing affordability using the Tamale Metropolis as a case study. Using stratified random sampling m...

Water insecurity is a key public health and developmental challenge for many communities across the world. Using a meta-ethnographic synthesis, this study examines how households cope with water insecurity, as well as the socio-economic consequences and determinants of water insecurity coping strategies. A systematized keyword search was conducted...

The process of urban change does not only occur on the outskirts of the city, but also in the inner cities in the form of infilling and alterations to existing housing. An observed trend in most cities of Ghana is the concentration and development within the city centers. Using the Wa Municipality as a case study, this study seeks to examine the dy...

In Ghana, the constitution recognises stool land revenues as a principal source of funding local economic development. However, there has been a lacuna on the collection and disbursement of family land revenues. The study examines ground rent collection and disbursement on family land, revenue losses and the capacity of family landowners to assess...

This paper examined the impacts of large-scale land holdings on Fulani pastoralists’ livelihoods in Agogo, Ghana in the light of questions of Fulani citizenship and increased violent conflicts between farmers and pastoralists. The study is theoretically conceptualized within issues of belonging, citizenship and legitimacy, which have heralded pasto...

Ghana experienced a surge in large-scale land acquisitions in the past decade spearheaded by the bioenergy crop jatropha. To accommodate such acquisitions, small and medium-sized land holdings were consolidated to develop large parcels of land that could accommodate large-scale investments. Chiefs have been an important player in these processes as...

A study on the dynamics of the defect liability period (DLP) in Ghana is lacking, notwithstanding the fact that it is a common practice in the real estate industry. This study examines the practice of the DLP in Ghana’s real estate industry. The study adopts a combination of simple random and stratified sampling techniques to select 29 members of t...

Ghana is identified as one of the countries in Africa experiencing unprecedented levels of land based Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) dubbed ‘land grab’. One important aspect of the land grabbing discourse that has not been explored in both academic and policy circles in Ghana is the adaptive livelihood strategies of those whose lands have been a...

Large land acquisition for agro-investment globally is stirring debate about their socio-political, cultural, economic, and ecological implications on smallholders and host communities. Though several works are on going in this area, empirical ndings that seek to identify and compare winners and losers of large-scale land transactions in host commu...

Purpose This paper discusses property taxation and examines the extent of its contribution to financing urban infrastructure/services in Ghana. Dwelling on existing literature, it analyses the contribution of property tax to local level internally generated funds (IGF) and expenditure on urban infrastructure/services financed from IGF. Design/meth...

Large land acquisition for agro-investment globally is stirring debate about their socio-political, cultural, economic, and ecological implications on smallholders and host communities. Though several works are on going in this area, empirical findings that seek to identify and compare winners and losers of large- scale land transactions in host co...

The resource curse thesis has been a subject of debate for many decades particularly in low-income nations such as those of Africa, which are endowed with abundant resources but are poor by every indicator of human development. This study was designed to find out the perceptions of Nigerians living in Aberdeen, Scotland on how the oil industry in N...

Food insecurity remains persistent in the Global South due to constraints in food production capacities and intricate land tenure systems that stifle investment in agriculture. In the urbanized regions, uncontrolled urbanization and non-compliant land use systems have further worsened the potentials for urban food production. This research is based...

Synergies among land institutions and institutional changes impact on land markets and in guaranteeing agro-based employment, capital injection, local economic development and infrastructural improvement. Increasingly, these institutions have come under pressure and there are concerns about their functional capacities and implications on land marke...

Following the recent evolution in the demand for land due to population growth and urbanisation in Africa, there are rising contestations and conflicts over the ownership, access and use of customary land. The situation intensifies with increasing land values and scarcity as a result of commoditisation, individualisation and commercialisation of la...

The world continues to battle food insecurity due to persisting constraints with food production, distribution, storage, processing, consumption and waste man- agement. The recent global food crisis redirected investment in new paradigms of food research to find innovative strategies of food production including urban and peri-urban agriculture. In...

Population growth in many of Africa’s towns and cities has outpaced local authority capacity to provide efficient management, infrastructure and financing. There is already debate over the capability and capacity of urban local governments to provide basic services to a growing population, due to budget constraints and inability to raise the requir...

This study focuses on stakeholders’ participation, perceptions and local contextualization in the Informal Settlement (IS) regularization processes in Khulna City. These processes are undertaken to address livelihood challenges of IS dwellers and to operationalize development initiatives in informal regularization projects. Adopting both a qualitat...

Studies draw attention to gender inequalities in land tenure. While some insist that gender inequalities in land tenure exists others do not. This paper discusses a study that examined gender issues in customary land ownership in the Wa Municipality. It sought to understand and find ways of bridging the gender gaps, if any. A survey covering 151 re...

This study examined how land resources are shared and used as well as the emerging issues from the perspective of customary rules, norms and practices in Bassari communities of northern Ghana. A qualitative survey was undertaken in four Bassari communities in north- eastern Ghana. The results revealed that though communal rights exist in Bassari co...

The desire to increase global biofuel production and consumption in recent times is fuelling conversion of vast arable lands from food production to the cultivation of biofuel feedstock in some regions of the world. In the case of Ghana; the increasing trends of jatropha cultivation in the transition forest zone and the northern savannah belt of th...

Even though food remains a basic need of man, the world still battles with food insecurity due to persistent constraints with food production systems especially in the Global South. The 2007/2008 food price hikes globally re-energised investment in innovative strategies of food production including urban agriculture. Unfortunately, uncontrolled urb...

The growth of Africa’s towns and cities has outpaced local authority capacity in terms of management, infrastructure and financing. Many African towns and cities are now facing a governance crisis. Accordingly, the capability and capacity of urban local government to provide basic services to a growing population have entered the core of the develo...

Land is a very important natural resource without which man would have been unable to support lots of his socio-economic needs. Populations in the world over have increased considerably over the last few decades and that of Ghana is no exception. In Ghana, this increasing population has reflected in an extensive demand for land for agricultural, re...

Introduction Land is, indeed, a very important resource. It remains the source of wealth and livelihood for humanity. There is also an increasing demand for land and the need for ownership security due to the following reasons: need for living space, density of the population, intensity of land use, potential of land, increase in demand for bio-fue...

Several research works have been conducted to draw attention to gender inequalities in land tenure system. While some researchers have insisted that there is no problem of gender inequalities in land tenure systems, others have also insisted there are gender inequalities in land tenure. This study was therefore conducted to find out whether there a...