GESTIÓN DE ADMINISTRACIÓN DE BIENES PROPIOS a) Facultad de administración

In policy circles, customary land rights are frequently associated with the allodial rights of chiefs to land, or the rights of chiefs to sell land. However, these are very modern notions, which could only occur in the context of the development of land markets and migrant farmers will- ing to purchase land. Without the development of frontier markets for land for export crop production, the issue of allodial rights and clearly defined customary rights does not arise. The definition of the allodial only acquires economic significance in the context of the alienation of land. Where everyone has only a use right to land, allodial rights do not carry any significant economic connotation. Allodial rights only ac- quire significance where there is an influx of migrants without rights of use and where land is transacted with these categories of people. Al- lodial interests thus only arise at the juncture where land is being com- modified. This was clearly recognised by Field (1948:7) when she com- mented:

The new income from mines and land sales means that the land, originally valueless to the oman [state] and quite indepen- dent of it, has become linked to the oman. The oman does not control or own it, but has acquired a very acute interest (in the non-legal sense) in it.

Since chiefs cannot sell land to insiders the assertion of allodial inter- ests only arises in the situation of demands on land by outsiders and investors, in the context of the commodification of land. This can be clearly understood if we examine conceptions of customary land in areas where the commodification of land is not highly developed.

In the northern transition zone of Brong Ahafo, population densities are low, frequently below twenty people per square kilometre. Land can be acquired by migrant farmers for nominal annual fees. These fees are not linked to the area cultivated; they merely establish permission to cultivate and recognition of the landlord. Citizens have rights to

farm anywhere in the land of their settlement where other people are not actively farming or managing fallow. Farmers claim land according to their labour power. They usually farm together along a line moving forward, until the land they have left behind is well regenerated, when they may chose to return to farm and begin a cycle of rotational bush fallowing or shifting cultivation. When farmers meet other farmers clearing from the opposite direction, they are forced to return to the lands at their back, reorient their direction of clearing, or move to a new area. Rights to land are established through the investment of la- bour in clearing vegetation. In this situation, farmers’ lands are con- stantly changing in relation to farming strategies and available labour. Rights to land are clearly recognised within the communities and de- termined by customary norms and conventions. However, these no- tions of land rights to the tiller do not fit easily into modern notions of ownership of specific areas, which can be mapped, digitised, placed in databases, and transacted in land markets and ‘one stop shops’.

Figure 3.2 Land management under rotational bush fallowing

The security of landholdings within this system only breaks down when chiefs begin to transact the land and allocate it to external inves- tors. Unable to extract revenues from local cultivators, chiefs look to the development of new high value crops and welcome external inves- tors to develop the land, or when such investors move into their local- ities concepts of land begin to change. In the transition zone of Brong

Ahafo, chiefs are currently allocating large areas of land to investors in teak, cashew, and exotic mango. Eventually, these new investments will create land shortage for the food crop farmers and disrupt their fallow management strategies. Policymakers usually define the customary as occurring at this juncture, when chiefs begin to allocate land to exter- nal investors, and plots begin to be demarcated, rather than at the junc- ture where user rights in land prevails. The concept of the customary is used to empower chiefs to sell the land to the external investors and to create the necessary reforms to facilitate this transaction. The cus- tomary has thus from the early colonial period come to define the pri- vilege of chiefs and their rights to alienate land to external investors as part of a process of commodification.

This is very apparent in the changes in land use in the grasslands of the southern Krobo areas situated in the Accra plains. Export mangoes are becoming a new crop, and external investors are now keen to ac- quire land in this area. This is transforming land values in a formerly highly marginal agricultural environment. An article inGhana Regional Newsof 18 September 2005, states:

The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr. Yaw Barimah, has suggested to the chiefs of Manya Krobo Traditional Area to take a second look at their land tenure system with a view to releasing land for commercial mango farming. He explained that mangoes grow well in the area and their cultivation could form the raw materi- al base for the development of agro-industry to provide employ- ment for the youth of the area.

This speech of the Regional Minister reveals many of the problems and concerns with current initiatives to strengthen customary tenure, defined as chiefly control over land. The empowerment of chiefs by the state to control land serves to enable chiefs to transform or re-invent tenure systems to serve the interests of elites. The chiefs are being asked to create reforms that will enable lands to be released to com- mercial mango farmers, presumably at the expense of the local popula- tion. The main role envisaged for youth is as providers of labour for agribusiness, which presumes their expropriation from the land and their inability to engage in independent livelihoods. In this context the phrase ‘taking a second look’ amplifies the process through which cus- tomary land tenure systems are recreated in the present. They are about commoditising land and creating the conditions under which land becomes transferred to investors with clear and undisputed own- ership rights attached to them. While these land rights may have been appropriated from others, they cannot be challenged, since they are authenticated by customary authorities with power to define and rede-

fine land rights. The customary (as represented by chiefs) thus serves to authenticate the commoditisation and appropriation of land and to transfer user rights into alienable rights.