The Land Rights and Farm Investment Ghana: The Missing Link in the Operationalisation of Tenure Security

Land management reform has re-emerged as a priority for many African countries and strongly supported by so-called development partners. This time round, a more nuanced theme combining the classic goals of enhancing tenure security, improving investment and productivity of land with those of poverty reduction and equity in land access. Many continue to question the neo-classical premise which perceives customary systems to not provide the necessary security to promote agricultural investment and productivity due to the lack of clearly defined private and enforceable property rights. Given the variety of methods used measuring land tenure security it would be useful to examine how the different measures of tenure security influence the outcomes of interest within the premise of the neo-classical hypothesis. This paper examines how diffrent methods of quantifying and measuring tenure security influence farm investment. We use data from 11 districts located in 4 agro-ecological zones of Ghana to analyse the land tenure security-farm investment nexus and how different measures of tenure security influenced household land improvement investment decision making.