Clearing the Ghanaian forest: theories and practices of acquisition, transfer and utilisation of farming titles in the Sefwi-Akan area

The enactment of land rights results from the combined, overlapping influences of the economic activities performed on the land and from the social and political conceptualisation of tenure. The analysis of both the changes in the productive system and the ideology of property relations enables one to focus on the land tenure practices without reducing land issues to a mere question of legal ranks. In what follows, rather than proposing a theory of land rights, I describe Sefwi tenure practices based on the complex dynamics which occurred on the territory over the twentieth century by evoking the histories of farms within the survey areas and in Sefwi more generally. The chronicle of land titles’ allocation over specific parcels contributes to a less ideological understanding of the tenurial regime.