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Graduate Student Research (2020 Deadline)
Ghana - Project E3-001: An Assessment of Land Governance and its Effects on Socio-Economic Empowerment of Gender
Mentor: Benjamin Doe, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi
Mentee: Valentina Nyame
Dates: July 2020 - December 2023
Project Overview
In the wake of rapid urbanization, the importance of land access for sustaining livelihoods has been reinforced due to the competing demand for agriculture and non-agricultural land uses. In Ghana, evidence shows a huge divide in land access between men and women, even though the Constitution prohibits gender discrimination and guarantees women’s right to inherit and own property. Although land can also be acquired through purchase or lease, the commoditization of land coupled with higher poverty among women has further exacerbated unequal access to land.
This PEER project sought to provide evidence of the gendered imbalance in the control of productive household land resources and its consequences on women’s participation in household-level land use decision-making. The researchers investigated landholders’ perceptions of tenure security against the drivers of tenure assurance to expose the potential risks that women are likely to experience in enjoying their land rights. They specifically focused on the Wassa Amenfi West District, which is an implementing district of Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana (SDFC), a project funded by USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program. In Ghana, the ILRG program is designed to address the complexities of deforestation associated with smallholder cocoa farming by providing technical expertise to reduce and reverse the impact of GHG emissions through effective landscape governance and land use planning.
Final Summary of Project Activities
The researchers used qualitative and quantitative secondary data from SDFC, using a subset of de-identified household survey data prepared from the project’s baseline survey conducted in 2019. The survey was conducted in 11 villages in the Wassa Amenfi West District. The team also analyzed three key reports of the project. The PEER team found that men owned the majority of farmlands in the district, granting them a significant power imbalance and control over household productive resources compared to women, which was reinforced by biased customary norms. While 31% of females own land, fewer women are engaged in decision-making about land, and they are at risk of losing the benefits of land ownership and meaningful participation in community-level land management processes.
There was low perception of land insecurity among both female-headed households and male-headed households, driven by high rates of dispute resolution and the active role of traditional authorities as mediators in customary land disputes. But women exhibit limited knowledge of customary land documentation, and a majority of household heads lack formal documentation of their land rights. Across households, educational status did not have a significant effect on knowledge of customary land documentation or documentation of land rights.
Compared to male-headed households, female-headed households faced a higher risk of losing their farmlands in the event of land disputes due to heavy reliance on tenancy agreements and lack of proper documentation. The researchers recommended targeted interventions to increase the meaningful participation of women, including skills training, capacity-building initiatives and increasing women’s representation in land governance structures. They also recommended a conscious effort to integrate basic land governance knowledge into educational curricula. In addition to their full report on the project, they also produced and distributed a two-page policy brief for stakeholders.
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