Ghana’s Land System: Unlocking Development Through Property Rights Reform

The Land We Stand On: Why Ghana Must Put Order into Property Rights to Escape Developmental Stagnation

Land is often treated as a backdrop to development, a passive asset that simply exists while factories rise, businesses expand, and cities grow. But this view misses the essential truth that every economist eventually confronts: land is not background. It is the stage itself. A society’s land system—how rights are defined, how ownership is recorded, how disputes are resolved—determines whether development accelerates or stalls. And in Ghana, land is not accelerating development; it is suffocating it.

It is no exaggeration to say that Ghana’s land system is one of the country’s largest hidden taxes on growth. In its current form—fragmented, ambiguous, contested—it locks away capital, deters investment, fuels conflict, and erodes trust in the state.

Economists sometimes speak of “dead capital,” a term Hernando de Soto made famous when describing properties that cannot be used as collateral. Funny enough, I met Hernando de Soto one late night in London where we had dinner, at which he shared with me how he and Bill Clinton had offered funding to Kuffour to complete a complete overhaul of Ghana’s land system in 2006. Kuffour, according to him, lacked political courage.

Ghana’s situation is more severe. Much of its land is not just dead capital; it is development antimatter. It absorbs incoming energy—money, effort, ambition—and converts it into conflict, uncertainty, and stagnation.

What a Well-Functioning Land System Actually Does

To understand why Ghana needs transformative reform, one must first understand what a modern land system accomplishes when it works.

• Poland’s dual registry system—where district courts maintain a Land and Mortgage Register and counties maintain the cadastre—creates an environment where every parcel is known, every right is visible, and every transaction is legally definitive. It is because of this clarity that foreign investors treat Poland as a mid-tier European safe haven.

• Japan’s legal registry, combined with municipal administration of zoning and permits, ensures that development does not descend into chaos. Cities thrive because land use is predictable, rights are enforceable, and nobody can build—or demolish—based on personal fiat.

• South Korea’s unified registration reforms, built on the foundation of land redistribution after the war, help explain why its cities could transform from slums to global metropolises in two generations. Land became legible, and legibility became a launchpad for investment.

• Peru’s large-scale cadastre formalization projects demonstrate that even in lower-income settings, clarity unlocks economic potential. Millions of families who once held land informally can now access credit and improve their property because the state recognizes and records their rights.

A well-functioning land system does one thing above all: it converts land from an object of conflict into an asset of development.

The Crushing Costs

Ghana’s land system, by contrast, operates like an economy with its brakes permanently engaged. The costs are everywhere.

1. Trapped Land = Trapped Capital

Large portions of peri-urban Accra, Kumasi, Tamale, and Takoradi sit undeveloped not because investors lack interest but because documentation is unclear, multiple claimants exist, or litigation has dragged on for years. Developers routinely report that they have bought the same parcel twice—or three times—because different family heads or sub-chiefs each claim authority.

In economic terms, this is a catastrophic misallocation of resources. Land that should be housing thousands sits idle. Land that should host factories becomes a battleground. In an economy where investment is already fragile, ambiguity becomes a near-lethal constraint.

2. Unlanded Properties Cannot Be Collateralized

Banks in Ghana routinely refuse to accept property as collateral if it lacks a fully registered title. As a result:

• small businesses cannot borrow
• families cannot leverage their homes to finance education or upgrades
• developers cannot access long-term credit
• investors cannot confidently securitize land-based assets

A land system that cannot support collateralization forces an economy into shallow finance. Growth becomes credit-starved, and entrepreneurs operate under chronic capital scarcity.

3. Litigation is a Drag on Economic Time

According to Ghanaian court data, land cases can take 5 to 15 years to resolve. Even when resolved, enforcement is often incomplete. Investors face intolerable uncertainty: they cannot build, they cannot finance, and they cannot plan when ownership is in question.

In economics, time is capital. Delays kill investment. Ghana’s delays are practically medieval in scale.

4. Violence is the Most Expensive Form of Institutional Failure

The Gbiniyiri conflict—31 dead, nearly 50,000 displaced—is an economic disaster, not just a humanitarian tragedy. Farmland is abandoned. Schools close. Markets collapse. Capital flees. Bawku’s conflict has turned a once-vibrant trade hub into a fortress of suspicion and lost potential.

Lukula’s destruction of homes represents lost wealth that took decades to create. Nkonya–Alavanyo’s century-old dispute is a reminder that unresolved land issues outlive development plans and generations.

A country cannot modernize when its land burns.

Comparing Ghana to Mature Systems: The Development Gap

Poland, Japan, South Korea, and the United States demonstrate what Ghana lacks:

• single sources of truth (registries)
• strong local administrative bodies with binding authority
• transparent cadastral systems
• rights grounded in documents, not narratives
• enforceable zoning and land-use rules

These nations grew because they built state capacity around land. Ghana is stalled because its land system is the opposite: a contest of stories, personalities, and competing institutions.

The Structural Reset Needed

If Ghana wants to transition from chaos to order, from stagnation to growth, it must restructure its land system around four pillars:

1. Universal Leasehold

Abolish private allodial ownership. All allodial rights should be vested in the state and stools—but only through institutions, not individuals. Citizens and businesses hold long-term leases. This eliminates the discretion that fuels conflict.

2. Land Trusts for All Stool and State Lands

These trusts become the only lawful transacting entities. Chiefs become ceremonial fiduciaries, not land dealers. Trusts operate under statutory oversight, with audited accounts and public transparency. This mirrors administrative structures in Japan and local land boards in the US.

3. Mandatory Registration

If it is not registered, it is not land—at least not legally.

This rule, standard in Poland and Japan, destroys the ambiguity that fuels Ghana’s conflicts. Oral history is not title. Family narrative is not evidence. Only documents issued through the land trust count.

4. Outlaw the Behaviors That Undermine the System

• Illegal Construction Must Be Automatically Demolished
  No registration, no permit. No permit, no building. If you build anyway, the structure must come down—without exception.

• Oral and Ancestral Claims Must Have Zero Legal Weight
  This strips away the evidentiary haze that sustains century-old conflicts.

• Private Demolitions Must Be Criminalized
  Only the land trust or authorized local administration may demolish structures—and always at the cost of the offending party. No more vigilante enforcement.

A Concrete Example: The New Juaben Land Trust

Under the new system, a developer seeking 50 acres in New Juaben approaches the New Juaben Land Trust, not any chief. The Trust consults a digital cadastre, evaluates the proposal with municipal planners, drafts a lease, registers it, collects payment into audited accounts, and manages all enforcement. Chiefs receive stipulated stipends, not discretionary land money.

No confusion. No duplications. No conflicts. The land becomes a productive asset, not a contested narrative.

A society cannot develop when its land is trapped—trapped in ambiguity, trapped in conflict, trapped in unregistrable parcels and unbuildable lots. Ghana today is running an economy with broken land software. And one cannot expect modern performance from a system that still relies on fragmented custom, oral testimony, and informal allocations.

Poland, Japan, South Korea, and even Peru show that nations can build order. Ghana can too—but only by choosing institutions over personalities, documentation over story, and universal rules over discretionary authority.

If Ghana puts order into land, it puts order into its future. If it does not, no reform—economic, political, or social—will stand on firm ground.

~ Hene Aku Kwapong, CDD Ghana Fellow, Ecobank Ghana Board Member, Founder – NBOSI.