Ethnic Emancipation and Urban Land Claims: Disenfranchisement of the Ga of Accra, Ghana

Abstract

Several Sub‐Saharan African countries have experienced an upsurge of land claims by various ethnic groups whose lands were acquired by both the colonial and the post‐colonial State through compulsory acquisition. Ethnicity has been used as the basis of emancipating some ethnic groups from perceived disenfranchisement and impoverishment caused by the State acquiring their land. In some cases such land claims result in violence that threatens the social fabric of these countries. An urban example of such a land claim has been made by the GaDangme Council (GDC) in Ghana. This paper assesses the land claim by GDC and argues that its claim of disenfranchisement is more a perception than reality. The paper also investigates why GDC perceives the Ga ethnic group as impoverished and disenfranchised. It concludes by providing structural and pragmatic ways for solving problems centred on Ga land acquisition by the State. Resolving the Ga case may provide lessons for other countries experiencing similar problems.

Accumulation by urban dispossession: struggles over urban space in Accra, Ghana

“…Urban scholars have engaged critically with a range of urban development processes in Accra, including the repression of informal economic activities (Adaawen and Jorgensen ; Asiedu and Agyei‐Mensah ; Obeng‐Odoom ); the forced eviction of squatter settlements (Afenah ; Grant ); and the commodification of communal lands for real‐estate development (Aryeetey et al . ; Owusu ; Yeboah ). Significantly, Obeng‐Odoom () argues that such phenomena can be understood in terms of the dispossession of Accra's poor of their land, livelihood and shelter.…”

“…The starkly contrasting and uneven geography of Accra thus encourages a ‘perception of disenfranchisement and impoverishment’ among Ga youth (Yeboah , 440). Dispossession is tangible in their everyday experiences of the geography of the city.…”

“…First, there is a long tradition of organised opposition to the expropriation and privatisation of communal land in Accra, particularly from Ga and Ga‐Dangme organisations that believe that their ethnic group is being dispossessed to the advantage of other Ghanaians (Quarcoopome ; Yeboah ). Since 2010, a group of young people from La calling themselves the PanAfrikanYemei Cooperative Society for Community Regeneration has begun to campaign for undeveloped expropriated land to be returned to community control.…”

Property rights for social inclusion: Migrant strategies for securing land and livelihoods in Papua New Guinea

“…A comparable situation, though not to the same level of dispossession as reported in some of the Indonesian case-studies, has been documented in sub-Saharan Africa where the sale of agricultural land to migrants is occurring in many rural areas despite traditional prohibitions on the sale of customary land (e.g. Amanor and Diderutuah, 2001;Sjaastad, 2003;Daley, 2005;Chimhowu and Woodhouse, 2006;Hagberg, 2006;Peters, 2007;Yeboah, 2008). 3 As in Indonesia, many rural land sales to migrants in sub-Saharan Africa are for the establishment of export cash crops and occur in the absence of formal land markets.…”

Planning by (mis)rule of laws: The idiom and dilemma of planning within Ghana’s dual legal land systems

“…(Resident interview, Kumasi, 2017) Gillespie (2016) also discusses an instance where farm areas in La, a community in Accra, were expropriated from farmers for public use. The expropriated land was later leased to private developers to build luxury mansion (AU Village) and other high-income residential and commercial developments (see also Kotey, 2002;Yeboah, 2008). These developed highincome areas within and near the La community have now been mapped as authorized planned areas, which sit in close proximity to other areas that have been declared and unmapped as unauthorized.…”