Meeting the 2030 Agenda: Responsible Consolidation of Ghana's Customary Lands

Land Consolidation on Sub-Saharan Africa’s customary lands have generally failed for various reasons. However, with the prevalence of land fragmentation as a problem in the past two decades, there has been a new wave of land consolidation activities in the region. Land fragmentation on customary lands has two main causes—the nature of the customary land tenure system, and the somewhat linked agricultural system. Since attempts to increase food productivity on customary lands have involved fertilisation and mechanisation on the small and scattered farmlands, these approaches have fallen short of increasing food productivity. Land
tenure security is further low on these lands. This study examines how a responsible land consolidation measure can be developed for customary lands to contribute to food security and land tenure security. A design research approach is used to develop a land consolidation measure for customary lands and reported here. This study concludes that though the land consolidation strategy developed is significantly able to reduce land fragmentation, both physical and land tenure, the local customs are an obstruction to the technical processes to achieve the best form of farmland structures. Hence the developed approach can contribute to
land tenure and food security.