Land Tenure Dynamism in Yam Farming in the Atebubu-Amanten District, Ghana

Abstract

Land tenure system in Africa has received extensive research coverage. For years the customary tenure system was regarded as contradictions to development. Researchers and donor organisations, particularly the World Bank, pushed this agenda and called for its replacement with a more efficient land tenure regime that would promote exclusive land use right through land title registration. After decades of the failure of the land title registration agenda to achieve the perceived investment in land, there is a shift to recognise the customary land tenure practices as evolving, negotiable, fluid, efficient and capable of promoting investment and development in land. This paper examines the effects of land tenure dynamism on yam farming in the Atebubu- Amanten District of Ghana. The paper situates the land tenure debate within the context of the evolutionary theory of land rights which argues that land tenure is evolving from communal landholding to atomistic family and individual landholding. The paper argues that the transition to the individual land rights affects the farming system based on shifting cultivation and land fallowing as practiced in the study area. The study concludes that there is a relationship between the land tenure system and the system of cultivation. Therefore, any attempt at land tenure reforms geared towards exclusive land use right through individual titling should take into consideration the prevailing farming system.