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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Between customs and state law: Land management in peri-urban Kumasi, Ghana
| Panel |
36. Between customs and state law: The dynamics of local law in sub-Saharan Africa
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| Paper ID | 127 |
| Author(s) |
Ubink, Janine
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| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
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| Abstract | Over the past years, development agencies and international organizations have increasingly paid attention to customary law as a means of regulating local resources and resolving disputes.
At the same time customary management is under pressure as a result of commodification of natural resources and evidence of increasingly restricted and insecure access for the poor and appropriation by traditional elites.
The changing values in for instance land result in attempts to redefine land tenure and ownership. Various actors not only contest their rights in land, but also dispute the customary norms applicable in the new economic situation.
This contribution will discuss various questions. First, how can such struggles be solved? How do unwritten norms evolve, in a ‘system’ without clear lawmaking institution or secondary rules (Hart)? What role does power play in this process?
And second, how should the government, that has recognized customary law as a source of law, deal with the various claims and contestations of customary norms and practices? How can it distill from the complex reality the rules of customary law to apply in court, or to build on with new policy?
We will study these questions with reference to peri-urban Kumasi, Ghana, that witness severe struggles between farmers and families on the one hand and chiefs on the other over the right to convert farmland into residential land.
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