Centre launches research into land acquisition

The Center for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA) of the University of Ghana has launched a research project that seeks to interrogate large-scale land acquisition and its implication on women.

The 30-month research project, which is being funded with support from the International Development Research Centre (IRDC) in Canada, seeks to investigate how and under what conditions women can be empowered to effectively participate in the processes of large-scale land acquisition to ensure better accountability and legitimacy in land governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

A similar project is also being carried out in Cameroun and Uganda to explore the de jure and de facto ways in which land transaction between rural traditional leaders and global capital takes place and the ways in which different constituencies (men, women, NGOs and state officials) contest these practices.

Participants drawn from various sectors, including civil society organisations and government officials, took part in the inception workshop which was aimed at seeking their involvement in land governance matters to advocate procedural and distributive justice in land transaction.

The research project

Giving an overview of the research project at an inception workshop at Legon, the lead researcher, Dr Akosua Darkwah, said Ghana was often touted as a beacon  in West Africa; a region wrecked by civil war and conflict.

She also said while it was true that Ghana had not experienced war and had the reputation of running violence-free elections, the perception that the country was  violence-free masked the fact that it was grappling with ongoing conflict, particularly over land disputes.

She noted that in recent years, the rush to invest in farmlands in Africa was having an immediate impact on women’s access to land–use options, their livelihoods, food availability, the cost of living and, ultimately, women’s access to land for food production.

She said aside these economic impacts, women’s knowledge, socio-cultural relationship with land and nature of stewardship were also under threat, hence the research.

Earlier research work

Dr Darkwah noted that research already done in Ghana showed that the new wave of corporate investments in farmlands was taking a toll on economic livelihood or rural dwellers. 

Quoting from one of such research works, Dr Darkwah said in one district in Ghana where more than half of the land had been leased to a foreign company, dispossessed farmers had to rely on lands that should have been left to fallow, which means a reduction in crop yield and, by extension, income.

“Women in that research reported through a focus group discussion that they had experienced a 70 to 90 per cent decline in the income they generated from the gathering, processing and the selling of “dawadawa” and shea nuts/shea butter," she said

The lead researcher also said the negative effects of dispossession were worse for women because they were also marginalised in the sharing of the compensation paid by the investors.

According to her, since Ghana’s land tenure system is dominated by a customary one, which is controlled by a set of unwritten rules and regulations, it is imperative that modalities are put in place to mitigate the negative impact of large-scale land acquisition on Ghanaians in general and Ghanaian women in particular.