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Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa

Christian Lund author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:29th Mar '10

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Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa cover

This book looks at how public authority and the state are formed throughout Africa in land struggles and debates over property.

People exert tremendous energy to have land claims recognized as rights with a variety of political, administrative, and legal institutions in Africa. This book provides a detailed analysis of how public authority and the state are formed through debates and struggles over property in the Upper East Region of Ghana.Access to land and property is vital to people's livelihoods in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas in Africa. People exert tremendous energy to have land claims recognized as rights with a variety of political, administrative, and legal institutions. This book provides a detailed analysis of how public authority and the state are formed through debates and struggles over property in the Upper East Region of Ghana. While scarcity may indeed promote exclusivity, the evidence from this book shows that when there are many institutions competing for the right to authorize claims to land, the result of an effort to unify and clarify the law is to intensify competition among them and weaken their legitimacy. The book explores how state divestiture of land in 1979 encouraged competition between customary authorities and how the institution of the earthpriest was revived. Such processes are key to understanding property and authority in Africa.

'… an important contribution to the growing literature about two interrelated dimensions of governance and development in Africa that are alluded to in the title … this is a concise, well-written book that will be of interest for a multidisciplinary readership.' Journal of African History

ISBN: 9780521148511

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 13mm

Weight: 320g

216 pages