Customary leaders and conflicts of interest over land in Ghana

Secure land rights are critical to the achievement of sustainable livelihoods and poverty reduction. In Ghana, customary authorities – namely chiefs and earth priests (tendamba) in the north and family heads in the south – are responsible for protecting and administering rights to land for the benefit of the communities that they govern. However, increasing opportunities to transact in land have enticed some authorities to sell off community land with little or no consultation with the rightholders. This conduct has led to the dispossession of small-scale farmers and is the source of widespread indignation among the Ghanaian citizenry. Here, we discuss how statutory law and customary law frame the rights of customary authorities to transact in the land that they govern, and compare this to what is happening in practice.