Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa

This book looks at how public authority and the state are formed throughout Africa in land struggles and debates over property.

Christian Lund (Author)

9780521886543, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 March 2008

224 pages
23.3 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.44 kg

'… an important contribution to the growing literature about two interrelated dimensions of governance and development in Africa that are alluded to in the title … this is a concise, well-written book that will be of interest for a multidisciplinary readership.' Journal of African History

Access to land and property is vital to people's livelihoods in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas in Africa. People exert tremendous energy to have land claims recognized as rights with a variety of political, administrative, and legal institutions. This book provides a detailed analysis of how public authority and the state are formed through debates and struggles over property in the Upper East Region of Ghana. While scarcity may indeed promote exclusivity, the evidence from this book shows that when there are many institutions competing for the right to authorize claims to land, the result of an effort to unify and clarify the law is to intensify competition among them and weaken their legitimacy. The book explores how state divestiture of land in 1979 encouraged competition between customary authorities and how the institution of the earthpriest was revived. Such processes are key to understanding property and authority in Africa.

1. Local politics and the dynamics of property: an introduction
2. 'This situation is incongruous in the extreme': the history of land policies in the Upper Regions of Ghana
3. Who owns Bolgatanga? The revival of the earthpriest and emerging tensions over property
4. Seizing opportunities: chieftaincy, land and local administration
5. Settled facts or facts to settle?: land conflicts under institutional uncertainty
6. 'Bakwu is still volatile': ethno-political conflict and state recognition
7. The rent of non-enforcement: access to forest resources
8. Small dams and fluid tenure
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], African history [HBJH]