Download or read book Transformations of traditional landuse systems and their effects on development opportunities and people s livelihoods in Northern Ghana written by Gordana Kranjac-Berisavljevic and published by kassel university press GmbH. This book was released on 2015 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural land in Northern Ghana was under the traditional arrangements till recent times. Small-scale farmers and their families could collect water, firewood, fodder and seasonal fruits or carried out hunting on communal lands, owned by local chiefs and fetish priests, under the provisions made by customary laws. Recent developments in this area include up-scaling of the mining industry, large scale commercial agriculture projects and cultivation of biofuel crops. All these development schemes are affecting access to natural resources by the local people as they affect water, land and even vegetation in the project areas. This paper discusses some recent projects in Northern Ghana and their positive and negative effects as well as impacts on the local population and their livelihood. Role of government as well as civil society in these transformations is also considered.
Download or read book Cities and rural transformation A spatial analysis of rural youth livelihoods in Ghana written by Diao, Xinshen and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urbanization has had a major impact on livelihoods in Ghana and throughout Africa as a whole. However, much research on urbanization has focused on effects occurring within cities, while there is insufficient understanding of its effects on rural areas. This paper examines the impact of urbanization—through a typology of districts—on rural livelihoods in Ghana. The country’s districts are classified into seven spatial groups according to the size of the largest city in each district in southern and northern Ghana. The paper does not address rural–urban migration but instead focuses on the livelihoods of rural households. In contrast to the extensive literature focusing on the effects of urbanization on individuals, we assess its impacts on individual rural households as a whole, with a particular focus on youth-headed households. Many rural households have shifted their primary employment from agriculture to nonagriculture, especially in the more urbanized South. In contrast, change in livelihood diversification within rural households with family members’ primary employment in both agriculture and nonagriculture appears much less rapid. Rural youth-headed households are significantly more associated with the transition away from agriculture than households headed by other adults, and such trends are stronger in locations closer to larger cities, particularly in the South. Although the nonagricultural economy is becoming increasingly important for rural households, contrary to expectations, the probit model analysis in this paper shows that agricultural production does not appear to be more intensified—in terms of modern input use—in the more urbanized South, and youth do not show greater agricultural technology adoption than other adults, indicating that the constraints against modern input adoption may be binding for all farmers, including youth and farmers in more urbanized locations. We also find that rural poverty rates are consistently lower among nonagricultural households, and the share of middle-class population is also disproportionally higher among rural nonagricultural households than agricultural households. While the probit analysis confirms the positive relationship between being a nonagricultural household and being nonpoor or becoming middle class after controlling for all other factors, education seems to play the biggest role. As rural youth become more educated and more households shift from agriculture to the rural nonfarm economy, a different range of technologies for agricultural intensification is necessary for agriculture to be attractive for youth. A territorial approach and related policies that integrate secondary cities and small towns with the rural economy deserve more attention such that the diversification of rural livelihoods can become a viable alternative or complement to rural–urban migration for youth.
Download or read book Landownership and the gender gap in agriculture Disappointing insights from Northern Ghana written by Yokying, Phanwin and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Land provides the basis for food production and is an indispensable input for economic livelihoods in rural areas. Landownership is strongly associated with social and economic power, not only across communities and households, but also within households. The link between landownership and women’s empowerment has been relatively well documented in general, but not specifically in relation to agriculture. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing how ownership of land is associated with agency and achievements in agriculture among female and male farmers in northern Ghana, a region transitioning from customary land tenure without individual ownership rights towards a more individualized and market-based tenure system. We use a recursive bivariate probit model and focus on eight different indicators in four distinct domains: decisions on agricultural cultivation, decisions on farm income, agricultural association membership, and time allocation. Our empirical estimates indicate that landownership is positively correlated with men’s and women’s agency in agriculture, namely in decisions on agricultural cultivation and membership in agricultural association. Yet, we also find that the gender gaps in participation in cultivation decisions, the use of agricultural earnings, and in agricultural workload continue to persist among those who own land. While the results underscore the importance of land as a resource that can enhance women’s agency, they also point out that policies aiming to solely advance land rights may not be sufficient to eradicate or even reduce gender inequality in agriculture.
Download or read book A Spatial Analysis of Youth Livelihoods and Rural Transformation in Ghana written by Silver, Jed and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 3 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghana’s population is becoming younger and increasingly urbanized – by 2010, over half the population lived in urban settlements of more than 5,000 people – raising concerns among policy makers regarding the location and types of jobs required to employ the youth. The slow creation of for-mal urban jobs has particularly strong implications for young people entering the labor force: they are more educated than the older generation, with greater aspirations for non-farm em-ployment and urban lifestyles (Anyidoho, Leavy, and Asenso-Okyere 2012). Without rapid industrialization to create more formal manufacturing and other non-agricultural jobs, youth in Ghana who leave the agricultural sector are increasingly likely to resort to informal services in both rural and urban areas. While much youth-related research has focused on changes in youth employment and livelihoods through rural-urban migration, a re-cent IFPRI Discussion Paper focuses on youth in the rural non-farm economy (Diao et al. 2017).
Download or read book Evolution of Customary Land Tenure Systems and Sustainable Livelihoods in Northern Ghana written by Joseph Awetori Yaro and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Global Restructuring and Land Rights in Ghana written by Kojo Amanor and published by Nordic Africa Institute. This book was released on 1999 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The report highlights the long history of commodification of land and labour in Ghana, linked to speculative activities and more recently to the activities of international capital, agribusiness, international agricultural centres, and agencies of the state. It makes the case for a new land, agrarian and natural resource regime that prioritises domestic economic needs to provide security of livelihood to the generality of the people.
Download or read book Ghana in Search of Development written by Dan-Bright S. Dzorgbo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2001. When Ghana became independent in 1957, becoming the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to banish colonialism, there was a general optimism that irreversible socio-economic development was about to unfold. But by the end of the 1970s Ghana paradoxically became the first country in Twentieth Century Africa to have experienced socio-economic decline. What failed Ghana? This book seeks to answer this question. By combining sociological, economic, political and institutional perspectives, this book focuses on the interplay between state politics and socio-economic development. It provides a model, which suggests that Ghana’s postcolonial development has suffered mainly as a result of the failure or inability of governing elites to develop consensual politics and a clearly specified long-term development objective that could be widely understood, accepted and have relevance for policy making. This book presents a much-needed self-assessment of the post-colonial development experience which contends that governance, economic management and institution building are basic challenges without which the search for development is likely to falter.
Download or read book Modeling Land use Change in the Volta Basin of Ghana written by Ademola K. Braimoh and published by Cuvillier Verlag. This book was released on 2004 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Land change studies in a 5,400km2 area within the Volta Basin of Ghana were carried out using satellite image and socio-economic analyses. The dominant change process was conversion of natural vegetation to cropland at an annual rate of 5%. Reversible land change trajectories involving accumulation of woody biomass indicate a certain level of rainfall-induced ecosystem resilience. Linear and logistic regressions identified agricultural land suitability, distance from main market and localities, child-dependency ratio and population density as the main drivers of change. Policy measures that would relieve human pressure on vegetation resources, guarantee food supply and promote commercialization of agriculture are suggested.
Download or read book Spatial Planning in Ghana written by Ransford A. Acheampong and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents and analyses spatial planning in Ghana, providing a comprehensive and critical discussion of the evolving institutional and legal arrangements that have shaped and defined Ghana’s spatial planning system for more than seven decades; the contemporary policy instruments and mechanisms for articulating and implementing policies and proposals at multiple scales; and the formally established procedures for development management. It covers important themes in contemporary spatial planning discourse, including the evolving meaning, scope and purpose of spatial planning globally; the scales of spatial planning (i.e. national, regional, sub-regional and local); multi-level integration within spatial planning; public participation; the interface between urbanization, sustainable growth management and spatial planning; spatial planning and housing development; integrated spatial development and transportation planning; and spatial planning and the urban informal economy. Intended for undergraduate and graduate students, and academic researchers and practitioners/policy-makers in the multidisciplinary field of spatial planning, it appeals to readers seeking an international perspective on spatial planning systems and practices.
Download or read book Perceived land tenure security and rural transformation written by Ghebru, Hosaena and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tenure security is believed to be critical in spurring agricultural investment and productivity. Yet what improves or impedes tenure security is still poorly understood. Using household- and plot-level data from Ghana, this study analyzes the main factors associated with farmers’ perceived tenure security. Individually, farmers perceive greater tenure security on plots acquired via purchase or inheritance than on land allocated by traditional authorities. Collectively, however, perceived tenure security lessens in communities with more active land markets and economic vibrancy. Migrant households and women in polygamous households feel less secure about their tenure, while farmers with political connections are more confident about their tenure security.
Download or read book Changing Natural Resource Regimes in Northern Ghana written by Wolfram Laube and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2007 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colonial and national interventions have considerably changed the natural resource regimes regarding water and land in Northern Ghana. However, this change has not led to the establishment of new institutions, but different actors - farmers, bureaucrats, earthpriests, chiefs, and politicians - are continuously engaged in negotiation process over (natural) resources. While the institutional and distributional outcomes of these negotiation processes remain inconclusive they have led to a precarious local power balance, in which different actors rely on different institutions and changing political alliances to pursue their interests.
Download or read book Land Tenure Land Use and Environment in Ghana written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Large Scale Land Acquisition in Ghana written by Kristina Lanz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-04-27 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a large-scale land acquisition project for rice production in Ghana’s Volta Region, which has been purported by some to be a social and ecological showcase of a company entering a "community–private partnership" with affected communities. Celebrated by national and international media, the project has received substantial amounts of funding from various donor organisations and claims to empower women through its much-lauded outgrower project. Although discourses of "development", "sustainability" and "women’s empowerment" are used by the investment company, the state and the customary authorities to legitimise the large-scale land acquisition, this book highlights how the deal benefits mainly the powerful elite, including elite women, and generally increases the depreciation of those already most marginalised, such as poor female-headed households and settler communities that were dependent on resources from the commons now enclosed and transformed into a rice farm. The author adopts a New Institutionalist perspective in social anthropology in order to analyse how this land acquisition has been implemented in a plural institutional context and how different actors use different rules and regulations and associated legitimating discourses to increase their bargaining power and to pursue their own interests in a changing legal context. In addition, this perspective shows how benefits and losses are distributed along different intersecting axes of power, such as class, gender, clan membership and age. By focusing on power, gender and legitimisation strategies in the context of institutional change caused by the large-scale land acquisition, this book fills a gap in the literature on large-scale land acquisitions while contributing to the development of a theoretical perspective on institutional change, power relations and ideological legitimisation. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of land and resource grabbing, agricultural development and agribusiness, land management and development studies more broadly.
Download or read book Land Management in Ghana written by R. Kasim Kasanga and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Smallholders and land tenure in Ghana written by Lambrecht, Isabel and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, policymakers and development practitioners have debated benefits and threats of property rights formalization and private versus customary tenure systems. This paper provides insights into the challenges in understanding and empirically analyzing the relationship between tenure systems and agricultural investment, and formulates policy advice that can support land tenure interventions. We focus on Ghana, based on extensive qualitative fieldwork and a review of empirical research and policy documents. Comparing research findings is challenging due to the use of different indicators, the varying contexts, and the diversity of investments. The interaction between land rights and investment make establishing causality extremely difficult. Setting policy priorities and strategies requires more and better insights into the diverse responses of different stakeholders and the tenure and cropping systems involved.
Download or read book Modeling Land Use Change in the Volta Basin of Ghana written by Zoltán Sinkó and published by Cuvillier Verlag. This book was released on 2005 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Land change studies in a 5,400km2 area within the Volta Basin of Ghana were carried out using satellite image and socio-economic analyses. The dominant change process was conversion of natural vegetation to cropland at an annual rate of 5%. Reversible land change trajectories involving accumulation of woody biomass indicate a certain level of rainfall-induced ecosystem resilience. Linear and logistic regressions identified agricultural land suitability, distance from main market and localities, child-dependency ratio and population density as the main drivers of change. Policy measures that would relieve human pressure on vegetation resources, guarantee food supply and promote commercialization of agriculture are suggested.
Download or read book Ghana s Economic and Agricultural Transformation written by Xinshen Diao and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using Ghana as a case study, this work integrates economic and political analysis to explore the challenges and opportunities of Africa's growth and transformation.
