EXPLORING LAND OWNERSHIP ACQUISITION REGIME IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: A REFLECTION OF USUFRUCT RIGHTS CHALLENGES TO LAND IN SOUTHERN GHANA

Purpose: Historically, land is a natural gift, and freely acquired by early men through first-to-settle-on-the-land principle (occupation). Overtime, land acquisition had gone through varied transformations. These include offer by first village settlers; war and conquerors; Land Tenure system, and private acquisition through purchasing. Theoretical reference: This paper focuses on the later due to the complexity of its processes of acquisition and administration. Methods: This paper explores peer reviewed articles and conducted in-depth interviews with policy expert in land administration, landowners, defrauded land purchasers, selected chiefs and, land guards in Accra. The idea is to solicit their views regarding the linkage between challenges of usufruct rights to land and the multiple purchases of same land regime resulting from high value placed on land. Solicited data revealed inadequacy of empirical information on disconnect between the challenges of usufruct rights to land, land disputes and high premium placed on land in the existing literature. Results: This paper reveals that in recent years, land ownership acquisition in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been going through chequered administration processes in which Southern Ghana is no exception. The conventional thinking is that Land Tenure System accounts for challenges of land ownership acquisition regime in most parts of SSA. The paper argues that usufruct rights to land rather engender land disputes in land administration in Southern Ghana. Thus, this paper maintains that relative to factors responsible for land conflicts in Southern Ghana is the complexity of land administration process for land ownership acquisition regime and which has not been adequately studied empirically. Implications of research: It concludes that the high value placed on land does not only give way to the complexity of multiple ways of acquiring land ownership regime but also, produce the vicious cycle of land disputes in Southern Ghana. It suggests that the land administrators in Southern Ghana should design regulatory frameworks for land ownership acquisition regime to hold in check the implications of usufruct rights persistent challenges to land in Southern Ghana.