Urban planning practice under neo-customary land tenure

Contemporary discourses on land policy in sub-Saharan African countries have shifted from polarised debates that hitherto promoted formal land administration or romanticised customary tenure systems. Recent policy trends have emphasised the integration of customary and state tenure systems as a nascent strategy to achieve equitable land delivery. Conceptually embedded in the exploratory concepts of co-production and institutional hybridity, the main question posed by this thesis is how are collaborative engagements between local government planning administrations and customary authorities in land delivery forged and what outcomes are produced from these engagements in peri-urban Ghana? The thesis draws on a case study of neo-customary land delivery practices in the secondary towns of Tamale and Techiman, to interrogate the prevailing view that hybrid land governance systems can promote equitable land delivery. The findings of the thesis revealed that local planning and land delivery in Ghana are not undertaken as solely technical functions but as hybrid practices among a medley of actors with different interests and values. Interactions among these heterogeneous sets of actors are driven and shaped by local agency or practices and mediated through various negotiations and strategic alliances. This culminates in different outcomes for different individuals. Peri-urban land is thus jointly co-produced by state and neo-customary regulatory systems. These findings challenge the conventional understanding on formal and informal land markets in African cities. The overarching argument advanced by the thesis is that just as formal land administration is admissibly inequitable and hitherto idealised customary tenure evolving towards commodified and individualised systems, the harmonisation and integration of customary and state land administration systems does not analogously guarantee equitable and inclusive land management in Ghana. Rather, context specificity, the nuances in land tenure practices, and the actions of actors shape the generated outcomes. In rapidly urbanising secondary cities, the integration of customary and formal land administration systems has reinforced inequitable and exclusionary outcomes in land delivery due to the presence of unequal power relations, opportunistic behaviours, under-resourced government agencies, and re-interpreted traditions. The thesis thus cautions against the uncritical and unreserved generalisation of the outcomes of hybrid land tenure systems and advocates for experimentation and learning across various neo-customary land delivery contexts in sub-Saharan Africa. The thesis concludes by exploring and explicating the implications of hybrid practices of planning and land delivery for equitable and sustainable land delivery.

Author dc:creator

• Akaateba, Millicent Awialie

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Misselwitz, Philipp

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Identifier URI

http://dx.doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-7344

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:depositonce.tu-berlin.de:11303/8189