International Political Economy and the Land Rush in Africa: Trends, Scale, Narratives, and Contestations

The Global Land Rush and Agricultural Investment in Ghana: Existing Knowledge, Gaps, and Future Directions

“…In addition to domestic policy, the last phase of expanded private sector investment has been facilitated by broader trends of economic liberalization that have resulted in a global boom in land-related investments [32]. In the recent context of Africa, such a boom was also further bolstered in the years following the 2007/2008 hikes in global commodity prices, which resulted in a global rush for arable land [2]. The prevailing policy context created the enabling environment for a vast number of land deals, which have taken place from the Gold Coast era to present-day Ghana.…”

“…Existing research points to the 2007/2008 global triple crises of food, energy, and finance as being primary drivers of the growing interest in arable land around the world [1,2]. The spike in food commodity prices between 2007 and 2008 in particular is noted as a reason why investors rushed to acquire agricultural land, leading to an estimated 56 million hectares of land being acquired globally by 2010 [3].…”

“…The spike in food commodity prices between 2007 and 2008 in particular is noted as a reason why investors rushed to acquire agricultural land, leading to an estimated 56 million hectares of land being acquired globally by 2010 [3]. In the case of Africa, in 2020, it is estimated that 15.2 million hectares were leased or acquired [2]. Thanks to its central role in the global land rush, Africa remains a focal unit of analysis as well as a center for struggles and controversies over what is believed to be "land grabs" [4][5][6][7][8][9].…”

The evolving dynamics of land administration and its implications for physical planning in Sub-Saharan Africa: experiences from Wa, Ghana

“…In SSA, efforts over the past few decades to establish robust land administration systems have been bedeviled with challenges. Among these challenges include the execution of dual land administration systems with both traditional and statutory structures which proves too costly, time consuming and capacity demanding within the existing legal, institutional and political context (Andrews and Cochrane 2021;Chitonge 2019;de Vries et al 2021). In some societies in the region where land is moving from a free gift of nature to being exchanged through the market, land administration is adjusting to consider a more extensive scope of situations that duly recognizes customary rights that may not be registered formally (Chigbu et al 2017).…”