Urban development and emerging relations of informal property and land-based authority in Accra

Abstract

Rural–urban migration leads to ever increasing numbers of Africans living in informal settlements. In Accra's largest informal settlement, Old Fadama, residents by definition have no statutory rights to the land and their building activities undermine formal state law and state-recognized customary landowners. Statutory institutions are unable to enforce property rights and alternative interests emerge and organize. In multiple and fragmented ways, local stakeholders create and define their own informal relations of property and land-based authority. This article examines four cases of land transfers, building and development in the settlement that involve a variety of local, national and global actors. Their actions show the contemporaneous making and unmaking of different relations of property and land-based control and authority in the densely populated urban site. Important features of urban development in Accra are thereby shown to be variations in property relations and the multitude of actors that validate land use but that circumvent statutory institutions.

Connectivity in Chaotic Urban Spaces: Mapping Informal Mobile Phone Market Clusters in Accra, Ghana

“…In Ghana, studies on e-waste activities have affirmed how informal work 4 and placemaking businesses diversify local economies, create local jobs, and serve as the primary source of livelihood for the urban poor (Gillespie, 2016;Morrison, 2017). In Accra, the MPMs act as incubators with strong roots that keep them within particular locales, sharing urban spaces with low-cost amenities and, often, provide coaching, mentoring, and other supports (Graham and Thrift, 2007;Stacey, 2018). They inspire people to reimagine and reinvent public areas collectively and strengthen how such spaces are shaped to maximize shared values.…”

“…Not all MPM clusters follow this same path, but many encroach upon it along the way, which contrasts with other works that focus on the city as a whole or a specific site. By subsisting, resourcefulness, improvisation, and the use of social networks to substitute for capital and other deficiencies, the MPM continues to proliferate despite the sustained efforts by city authorities "to sanitize" or decongest the city (Crentsil and Owusu, 2018;Stacey, 2018).…”

“…The Circle stands out as the "home of wholesaling and retailing" of smartphones from China, Brazil, India, etc., in addition to expert re-purposing, repairs, and sales of phones. Circle uniquely exhibits "super-diversity," inclusive and egalitarian space, where, as noted by Stacey (2018), no ethnic group holds an intimidating majority but clusters men and women from different nationalities and social backgrounds…”

Geographies of land use: Planning, property, and law

“…Thus, a focus on the ways that land use is actually practiced on the ground becomes a central focus for scholars like Simone (, , ) who has elucidated upon the everyday informal and experimental tactics used by urban residents in using and making the city. At the same time, Simone has been joined by others, such as Vasudevan () who join the call for a reconsideration of actually occurring urbanism in light of the informal and improvisational structures of cities of the global south (see also Stacey, , ). Likewise, MacFarlane attends to the radically relational and incremental roles that urban inhabitants play in assembling cities and using urban spaces (in his examples, São Paulo, Mumbai, and Cape Town) through learning, labor, inhabitation, and dwelling rather than official channels of land use (McFarlane, , ).…”

Building Policy Coherence for Sound Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Management in a Developing Country

“…In Ghana, Grant and Oteng-Ababio (2019) noted that the WEEE industry had presaged a pervasive and inexpensive informal recycling, efficient in its way but inherently hazard-ridden (also Cucchiella et al, 2015). In most cases, engaging the WEEE industry informally depends on whether the sector is viewed from a discourse of resilience and innovation or from a survivalist or self-governance lens (Stacey, 2018). These policy relationalities mean that policy making is no longer the preserve of a particular country (Anane-Fenin & Akinlabi, 2017).…”