**5. Conclusions and Policy Implications**

This study examined the extent to which customary land dispute resolution mechanisms are fit for purpose in contemporary tenurial relations in rural Ghana. This is against the backdrop of increasing contestations over customary land, exacerbated by land commercialisation and commodification. Yet, the burgeoning scholarship has largely focused on large-scale land-grabbing and inter-community boundary disputes, with relatively little empirical attention to intra-community dynamics on traditional land dispute resolution processes [31–33]. The findings of this study demonstrate that despite concerns about the exclusionary practices in the customary land delivery process [9,49,51], traditional institutions remain the preferred fora for land dispute resolution in the surveyed communities. The overwhelming preference of traditional mechanisms for land dispute resolution rather than state courts (98% and 90% of respondents in Kakum and Ankasa, respectively) is a testament of the strong social legitimacy enjoyed by local customary tenure arrangements regarding land dispute resolution. For instance, reasons adduced by respondents for the high stated preference for traditional dispute resolution mechanisms included accessibility, in-depth knowledge of local tenurial issues by traditional authorities, inexpensive and expeditious settlement of disputes and public image (see Section 4.3). It therefore follows that traditional dispute resolution mechanisms can be supported and strengthened (particularly in terms of procedural equity and enforcement of decisions) as way of facilitating their integration into the statutory dispute resolution system.

In furtherance to this, efforts initiated under the auspices of the recently ended Land Administration Project (LAP) in collaboration with the Ghana Judicial Service to support the creation of Customary Land Secretariat (CLS) internal dispute resolution forums through alternative dispute resolution (ADR) are encouraging and should be up-scaled. In doing so, however, it is important to take cognizance of the myriad of local level challenges including protracted chieftaincy disputes and multiple claims to land that could stifle the harmonisation process (see Section 4). For example, with the existing contestations over land ownership at the paramountcy level in parts of Ankasa and Kakum, there is the underlying tendency that the government's move of ceding greater control over customary land in traditional authorities (through the CLS concept) as part of the

broader agenda of strengthening customary tenure institutions could further escalate these disputes (Section 4.3). Besides, a lack of permanent land boundaries and the undocumented nature of land rights also have a propensity to trigger (latent) land disputes and perhaps the loss of land rights of the poor and vulnerable social groups, especially in the wake of growing land scarcity and commodification [8].

This calls for the speedy resolution of chieftaincy disputes and conflicts over allodial ownership, land boundary demarcation and recordation of land rights as critical first steps towards improving certainty of land ownership in the study areas. Moreover, the existing power imbalances vis-à-vis the increasing monetisation of access arrangements have created seeming spaces for the manipulation and abuse of chiefly authority to the detriment of the poor and vulnerable social groups in the study areas [8]. This thus suggests that addressing issues such as transparency, accountability and fairness in customary decisions regarding land use and allocative decision-making is crucial to ensure efficient customary land delivery and safeguard the interests of the poor and vulnerable social groups [63]. Within this context, the legally mandated CLS (under the recently promulgated Lands Act 2020) provides a basis where some personnel and local women leaders may be trained as community volunteer paralegals to provide local support mechanisms for women and other vulnerable groups seeking to enforce their land rights in both customary and statutory spheres.

Furthermore, traditional authorities may be trained in these areas (under the auspices of the traditional councils, regional and national Houses of Chiefs and the Ministry of Chieftaincy and Culture) to ensure fairness in their administration of land and dispute settlement. At the same time, it is recommended that socially disadvantaged groups, including women, migrants and the youth, be allocated seats on the village land management committees to give a voice to these groups and sufficient consideration of their interests in land allocation. An encouraging sign that this could be achieved in Ankasa and Kakum is that a few migrant settlers in some communities have been elevated to the position of village headmen. Besides, adopting such an inclusive stance in the composition of local land management committees could foster institutional trust and possibly dispel any misconceptions of the CLS being a collusion between government and traditional authorities to usurp the land rights of rural landholders. The creation of a permanent gender desk under the CLS would also provide useful support and protection of land rights of women and other marginalised groups. Equally important is the need to review the excessive concentration of power in traditional authorities under the existing regulatory framework on customary land administration to safeguard against potential abuse of authority and discrimination. One way to achieving this end would perhaps be the codification of existing customary rules and norms on land allocation and use in different traditional areas to afford clarity and unbiased interpretation as well as minimise their susceptibility to manipulation by traditional authorities. This is, however, a very complex issue, considering that the codification has the propensity to fossilise fluid customary norms, thereby limiting their flexibility [63–65]. Besides, the fact that land matters are politically sensitive sitting at the cleavage of national politics and tradition in Ghana vis-à-vis the government's policy of non-interference highlights the need for a cautious approach to legal reforms in this direction. Navigating this dilemma thus requires serious political willingness on the part of government and traditional authorities in facilitating the creation of more neutral policy spaces for these sensitive yet important issues to be deliberated amongst politicians, representatives of the regional and national Houses of Chiefs and civil society groups at large. Academia also has an important role to play in continuously undertaking independent evidence-based research to inform policy deliberations and actions, particularly on questions regarding who benefits and who loses from efforts on harmonising traditional and statutory adjudicatory mechanisms in customary land governance.

This study is not without limitations. The cross-sectional nature of the dataset has meant that important differences and tenurial changes over time that might affect land dispute dynamics could not be explored. It is recognised that the use of household panel data will afford an opportunity to capture effects of tenurial changes on local dispute resolution mechanisms and preferences over time rather than cross-sectional variation only. A related issue has to do with the limited interpretability of the findings, as they might be subject to self-reported recall bias. The generalisability of the survey findings to other contexts with varying socio-economic and tenurial characteristics, particularly northern Ghana, should be with caution. Nevertheless, the combination of qualitative and survey data (especially information obtained through key informant interviews and focus group discussions) afforded a unique opportunity to sufficiently explain and capture some local-level nuances in local dispute resolution pathways and preferences, which otherwise would have remained unobserved or hidden in a wholly quantitative study.

**Funding:** The manuscript writing was supported through the Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/R016429/1 as part of the UK-SCAPE programme delivering National Capability.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The research was carried out as part of larger DPhil study titled "Land Tenure and Sustainable Land Use in Rural Ghana", which was approved by the Central University Research and Ethics Committee (CUREC) of the University of Oxford in 2013.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Participation in this research was voluntary and all participants gave their full prior-informed verbal and written consent before the conduct of the interviews and household survey. The collated data from the survey and interviews were duly anonymised using de-identifiers or pseudonyms to safeguard the confidentiality of participants.

**Data Availability Statement:** The datasets generated and/or analysed during the present study are not publicly available in order to protect the privacy of participants but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

**Acknowledgments:** The author would like to thank Gideon Tuffour and Godfred Bempah for research assistance. We are grateful to the traditional leaders and community members of the Kakum and Ankasa regions and other research participants for their contributions to the research process. We also express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and other colleagues at Oxford for their valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. All remaining errors are the author's own.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
