The Role and Functions of the Lands Commission in Ghana

Dec 08, 2025 0

Land is a critical asset for Ghana, underpinning its economic, social, and cultural development. With a total land size of 238,539 square kilometers, the nation's political and material wealth, as well as its sustainable development, are fundamentally linked to this resource. According to the Ghana Statistical Service (2021), the nation's population was estimated to be 30.1 million as of the 2021 population and housing census. Approximately 60% of the working population is employed in the agricultural sector, which contributes to about 35% of household income. Given these statistics, there is a significant demand for land for both housing and agriculture, making effective land governance essential.

Map of Ghana showing its regions.

The 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana provides the general legal framework for land governance and administration. Land is a valuable asset that appreciates over time, making it a crucial investment. In fact, it is difficult to imagine any economic activity that does not require the use of land. Interest in land is vital in business contracts and is an indispensable pre-requisite for any economic venture, making it a dominant commodity worldwide.

In Ghana, land acquisition is organized along two main lines: customary and statutory or public. Customary lands are owned by stools, skins, families, or clans, typically held in trust by a chief, head of family, clan, or fetish priests for the benefit of their members. Private ownership can be acquired through a grant, sale, gift, or marriage. Public lands are vested in the president for public use.

Legal and Policy Frameworks for Land Acquisition

Land remains an asset of great importance to many economies all over the world. It has been a source of income; food and employment, among other things to millions of people all over the world. Due to its importance, land has been a contentious issue in many parts of Ghana, especially in Northern Ghana where many conflicts or wars have been fought over land. This has led to the formulation of legal instruments to provide the framework for land administration in the country.

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A noticeable feature of land administration in Ghana is the use of both modern legal instruments and customary land laws. In most parts however, customary land tenure arrangements are widely used in land administration, especially in the rural areas of the country. Property in land is surely one of the most socially embedded of the elements of a legal order. In Ghana the availability of land for any form of use is influenced by the tenurial arrangements that govern the use of the land.

Kasanga (1988) defines land tenure as the various laws, rules, and obligations governing the holding and/or ownership of rights and interests in land. Public land consists of all the land acquired in the public interest by the government and land that was vested in the government before the coming into force of the 1992 Constitution. Private land, constituting around 80 percent of all land is in fact communal land held in trust for the community by a traditional authority (a stool in Southern Ghana and a skin in Northern Ghana) or a clan, family or in some cases, individuals (this varies in the different areas of Ghana).

To these two main categories of public and private lands, two other categories can be added to provide for specific cases. These are the category of “vested lands”, whose ownership is split between the state and the traditional owners and and the category of “private lands given or sold as freehold by stools, skins and families to individuals, corporations and institutions”. Legitimate tenure rights have been overridden, families have lost their homes and livelihoods, in some cases environmental damage has taken place and disputes over tenure rights have escalated to violent conflicts resulting in deaths and political unrest.

The Lands Commission role in the registration of land as stipulated in the 1992 constitution and other constituted authority especially the Ghana Land Act, 2020 Act 1036 is the guiding policy document on land administration in Ghana.

A satisfactory system of land administration should give ordinary people a sense of security concerning the lands they hold and freedom from fraudulent claims. It should provide a man who lays out good money whether as a purchaser of land or as a lender against the security of a mortgage of land, with some independent means of assuring himself that he is obtaining good title and not a lawsuit. The ideal situation would seem to lie in the direction of arranging things in a way that an official record is available for inspection, a record, which shows the title situation concerning any given piece of land.

A review of these institutions reveals serious shortcomings related to design of the state regulatory framework, and in particular inadequate institutional capacity for the implementation of state management policies to protect the wide range of interests in land. The effectiveness of these institutions has been limited by a variety of factors which can be categorised as institutional, logistical, human resource constraints, lack of funding and unclear definition of scope of functions, among others.

The result has been an apparent lack of a satisfactory or secure system of land administration for ordinary people as earlier noted. The end state is the apparent lack of confidence by the general populace of the ability of these estate institutions to protect their rights or secure their tenure. Service delivery by the land sector agencies has been characterised by lack of coordination between agencies often with unclear mandates. This has resulted in overlapping and duplication of functions among agencies.

A typical example, is in the administration of vested lands where there is an overlap of functions between Lands Commission and the Office of the Administrator of Stool lands. These duplications of functions add to the cost of service to the individual and time involved in service delivery.

Land Tenure Systems in Ghana

The land tenure system is supposed to guarantee one’s access to a given parcel of land and safeguards its security and usage. Land tenure is a field in which there have been major changes of view regarding the best means to control access to land and other resources and promote their development. Changes or reforms in tenurial arrangements have equally been problematic in Africa.

The use of multiple legal or institutional arrangements in land administration also presents a recipe for institutional conflict, particularly regarding which institution takes precedence over the other, as well as conflict over land rights administered under different institutional arrangements. As Lund (2011) notes “the colonization and modernization processes engendered a split in the legal system between state law and more customary regulation of social life. Landholdings, in different parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, are customary based tenure that is either recorded informally or unwritten.

As stated by Avery (2009) there is no land without a titleholder. Naturally land belongs to three groups of people, namely, the dead, the living, and the unborn. At any point in time, the living is just a custodian of the land. The owner of a land is thus any person or group of people that have the reserved right; legally or customary to use, convey, lease, or assign a parcel of land.

Land territory which was conveyed to light owing to enterprise of political philosophy is the extent to which a landowner’s power or right over a land end. Land is vested allodially in the cognate (kinship) group which includes the living family together with the ancestors and future generations. This made land ownership joint but not a divided one. Traditionally, land must not be alienated as it does not belong to any present generation alone.

Indigenes claim undeveloped land in the best interests of their family unit which over time inclines to evolve into family lineage land and then passed on over to family members over generations. Migrants outside of the associated group may be given the right to live, use and enjoy percentages of the land at the wish of the customary group.

Ghana has both statutory and customary land tenure structures that are being run synchronously together. According to article 267 of Ghana’s 1992 constitution, the chiefs and family heads are the custodians of such lands, and they have the power to enforce rights and obligations to the land which has been granted. This structure applies to rural, peri-urban, and urban centres.

Usually, no land is being possessed by the state excluding the one that has been obtained by lawful proclamation, statutory procedures, ordinances, or international treaties. Land can be acquired in Ghana through both Ghanaian citizens and non-citizens of Ghana in any quantity as the constitution does not show the size of land that can be acquired.

Unlike Ghanaian citizens, non-citizens of Ghana are not entitled to tenure interest in any land in Ghana but then a lease of up to fifty (50) years is suggested. Nevertheless, Ghanaians can acquire lands on a freehold interest or leasehold basis for ninety-nine (99) years conditional on renewal for a future term.

Fundamentally, there are three (3) main tenure of land viz. customary lands, state lands, and private lands. Nevertheless, the current tenure regime in Ghana offers five broad classes of land ownership.

State lands: All public lands are vested in the president on behalf and in trust for, the people of Ghana. These are commonly known as Government lands as stipulated in the 1992 constitution of Ghana. They were compulsorily acquired by the Government for their administrative and development functions, and which are in the absolute ownership of the state.
Family Lands: These lands belong to a family to which the absolute interest is operated by the head of that family. The family heads then use the usufructuary obligations to the members of the family as well as strangers.
Vested Lands: An estimated 2% of Ghana’s land is vested land. These are lands that were previously owned by the traditional indigenous community (i.e., town or village) but declared under the Land Administration Act 1962 (Act 123) S7 to be vested in the state and administered for the benefit of the community.
Stool or Skin Lands: This type of land belongs to a community that has a stool or skin as the traditional emblem of the soul of ancestors who originally occupied that parcel of land and therefore owned the stool or the skin. The skin or stool land is administered based on the principles of customary or native law. The occupant of the stool or skin, the chief, administers all the land in trust and on behalf of his people.

According to clause (3) of Article 267 of the 1992 constitution of Ghana, any disposition of stool lands must be approved by the lands commission.

The Lands Commission and Land Governance Assessment

The centrality of land to national development efforts in Ghana cannot be overemphasized. Land governance has an important bearing on the democratic process as a whole, influencing how competing interests in land are managed. The graphic changes have brought about an urgent need for good land governance.

The Lands Commission plays a crucial role in land registration, as stipulated in the 1992 Constitution and the Ghana Land Act, 2020 (Act 1036), which serves as the guiding policy document on land administration in Ghana. The effectiveness of land governance institutions has been limited by institutional, logistical, and human resource constraints, as well as a lack of funding and unclear definitions of functions.

Service delivery by land sector agencies has been characterized by a lack of coordination and overlapping mandates, leading to inefficiencies and increased costs. Addressing these challenges is essential to building public confidence in the ability of these institutions to protect land rights and secure tenure.

Digitising Ghana's Land Tenure System - Mahamudu Bawumia

Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF)

The Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) was implemented using positions suggested in the LGAF manual. Expert investigators were assigned tasks, including individuals with expertise in land economy and estate management. The Lands Commission has ten regional offices across the country, responsible for managing public lands and all lands vested in the President. The Survey and Mapping Division (SMD) and the Office of the Administrator of Stool Lands (OASL) were also represented in relevant thematic panels.

Panel workshops were conducted in various regions, including Ahafo, Upper East, and Northern Regions, ensuring cost-effectiveness and national representation. Participants included representatives from land agencies, universities, polytechnics, private practitioners, and media professionals. These workshops aimed to assess land governance through structured discussions and individual assessments.

The assessment process involved thematic panels focusing on land tenure, urban land use, rural land use and policy, land valuation and taxation, public land management, public provision of land information, dispute resolution, and large-scale acquisition of land rights. These panels contributed to a comprehensive assessment of land governance in Ghana.

Different Types of Land Ownership in Ghana

In Ghana, there are different types of land ownership, each with its own distinct characteristics:

Type of Land	Description	Management
State Lands	Public lands vested in the President on behalf of the people of Ghana.	Managed by the government for administrative and development functions.
Family Lands	Lands belonging to a family, managed by the head of the family.	Family head uses usufructuary obligations to members of the family and strangers.
Vested Lands	Lands previously owned by traditional communities but vested in the state.	Administered by the state for the benefit of the community.
Stool or Skin Lands	Lands belonging to a community with a stool or skin as a traditional emblem.	Administered by the chief in trust for the community, based on customary law.

These various forms of land tenure reflect the complex interplay between customary practices and statutory laws in Ghana.