Exploring the “implementation gap” in land registration: How it happens that Ghana’s official registry contains mainly leaseholds

The mismatch between customary law and statutory law is central in the ongoing land tenure discourse in Africa. Accordingly, differences between customary land rights and statutory land rights have commonly been identified to undermine inclusive land rights recognition and subsequent registration. However, there is less discussion about how existing alignments between customary land rights and statutory land rights are affected by implementation processes within and outside of land registration organizations. This paper looks at the case of Ghana where the existing law on land registration provides for the registration of diverse customary land rights, but ambiguity and contradictions among laws made at different times as well as practices of implementation of the law often result in the registration of only leasehold titles while neglecting other customary land rights. This creates an implementation gap which precludes the holders of lesser rights from registration and also reduces rights of usufructs to leaseholds. This qualitative study draws on document review and initial fieldwork in Ghana in two regions characterized by different land governance structures to investigate the nature of this implementation gap and the factors that explain it. Based on literature these factors relate to (1) legal simplifications versus real complexities; (2) administrative adaptations of the law; and (3) administrative capacity.