Recent large-scale acquisitions of rural land in Africa by international companies and non-African governments are taking place against a much longer history of land acquisitions by individuals and groups of relatively modest means (Cotula et al. Reference Cotula, Vermeulen, Leonard and Keeley2009; Cotula and Vermeulen Reference Cotula and Vermeulen2009; World Bank 2010). In Ghana, migrant farmers began moving into sparsely populated rural areas in the late nineteenth century, gaining long-term access rather than outright ownership of land for growing newly valuable export crops. In more recent times, increasing numbers of urban-based residents have acquired plots of rural land as assets to hold for the future, planting crops or putting up buildings to secure their claims to the land as well as produce income. Accompanied by rising rates of mobility between rural and urban locations within and beyond Ghana, these acquisitions amount to a kind of urban occupation of rural space, reordering rural landscapes, blurring divisions between rural and urban sectors of social and economic life, and augmenting linkages between rural areas in Ghana and other parts of the country and the world.
The present essay does not attempt to ‘map’ resulting rearrangements of land use or distributions of wealth and influence, but focuses instead on changes in relations of property and power, and some of the institutional arrangements through which wealth and power are accumulated and deployed that have accompanied small- and medium-scale acquisitions of rural land. Building on David Stark's argument that the demise of central planning in post-communist Hungary gave rise to new forms of ownership and management which he calls ‘recombinant property’, I suggest that the urban occupation of rural space in Ghana, which has accelerated during the era of structural adjustment, has been accompanied by a variety of experiments in enterprise and governance that are not necessarily consistent with equitable development or democratization (Stark Reference Stark1996; Verdery Reference Verdery1998). Following a brief review of recent trends in Ghana's political economy, I present a case history of development and governance in a rural town in Ashanti Region that is frequently cited as an example of developmental ‘success’ (see, for example, Lindberg Reference Lindberg2006, Reference Lindberg2008; Gyimah-Boadi Reference Gyimah-Boadi2009). I do so not to propose a model for policy makers, or to suggest that this case represents recent rural transformations in Ghana, but rather to explore patterns of accumulation and governance underlying a case of reputed success – asking what is actually being produced, and how people and resources are governed in the process.
GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT IN GHANA: THE ERA OF STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT
Since the late 1980s, substantial if uneven economic growth, 50 per cent in services and up to 9 per cent in construction (Ghana Statistical Service 2010), and two decades of stable two-party electoral politics have earned Ghana a widespread reputation for economic and political success. In the following pages, I use a case study of one rural town in the Ashanti Region to argue that Ghana's much-discussed social and political stability rests, inter alia, on densely interlocking hierarchies of political rivalry and connection, in which alliances are animated and tensions mediated by the fungibility of wealth and power. Far from being divided into separate national and local domains, ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ rubrics of governance and economic organization are interwoven at all levels of social, economic and political interaction. The case study that follows illustrates some of the ways in which influence and resources flow through and around these connections, fostering concentrations of wealth and power that do not appear in commonly cited statistical indicators. (For a quantitative study that does point to underlying patterns of inequality, see Goldstein and Udry Reference Goldstein and Udry2008.)
Land plays a central role not only in the nexus of wealth and power in Ghana, but also in the unusual prominence of ‘traditional authority’ in the country's governing system. Citing ancient historical precedent to define and legitimate their prerogatives, traditional authorities wield influence in ways that owe more to colonial practices of indirect rule than to pre-colonial institutions or political realities. Chiefly authority over land, in particular, stems from a late-nineteenth-century compromise between colonial authorities, anxious to consolidate their hold over the Gold Coast Colony and ward off any resurgence of Asante power, and Western-educated African lawyers, clergymen and merchants who spoke on behalf of coastal elites. Faced with vociferous objections from the latter, colonial officials withdrew a proposal to claim all ‘vacant and unoccupied land’ for the British Crown, acceding to African lawyers' argument that since all land was owned (whether occupied or not) by the people as represented by their natural rulers, there was nothing for the Crown to claim (Amanor Reference Amanor1999; Berry Reference Berry2001). Subsequently extended to Ashanti (but not the Northern Territories, where land remained under the control of the state until 1979), the principle of ‘native’ land ownership became a central premise of indirect rule, allowing chiefs to garner substantial rents from ‘stranger’ farmers who grew cocoa for the world market, and securing their complicity, if not outright cooperation, in British rule.
Following independence, chiefs' ‘allodial’ rights over lands historically attached to their respective stools survived Nkrumah's efforts to dismantle institutional legacies of colonial rule – in part because of Nkrumah's own ambivalence towards chiefs, especially those willing to declare loyalty to the President and the ruling party (Rathbone Reference Rathbone2000; Badu Reference Badu, Odotei and Awodoba2006). Eager to court all potential sources of support, the military and civilian regimes that rotated in and out of power after Nkrumah's overthrow sought allies among the country's ‘traditional authorities’. Far from fading away in the face of modern governance, the institution of chieftaincy gained strength throughout the 1970s and 1980s – a process marked by the reaffirmation of chiefly authority over land in the second, third and fourth constitutions (Arhin Reference Arhin2001). The central figure in the case history that follows claims to have played a leading role in making sure that the constitutions of 1979 and 1992 reaffirmed the principle that ‘all stool and skin lands are [legally] vested in their respective stools and skins’ (Constitution of Ghana 1992, Article 247 (i)).Footnote 1
Since Nkrumah's fall from power in 1966, chiefs have played the allodial title card for all it's worth, inserting themselves into the allocation of both rural and urban land, demanding (and getting) ‘tribute’ equivalent to the going market price of land in exchange for ratifying land transactions, and parlaying the resulting accumulation of wealth and influence into de facto social and political power. Led by the Asantehene, ‘traditional authorities’ in Ghana have convinced the World Bank and other international donors of their ability to bring government and development closer to ‘the people’, positioning their offices as conduits for development assistance and donor-backed programmes of administrative reform.Footnote 2 With encouragement from donors, Ghanaian chiefs have provided inspiration for the revival of ‘traditional authority’ in other African countries, as well as a growing chorus of international enthusiasm for the democratic potential of ‘traditional’ authority and customary law.Footnote 3 Within Ghana, chiefs have parlayed their constitutionally mandated authority over land and chiefly succession into widespread de facto influence at both local and national levels of wealth and power. In the following pages, I argue that their influence is sustained both through the fungibility of wealth and power, and through carefully nurtured ambiguities in customary rules, historical precedents and jurisdictional boundaries.
GETTING BY? MOBILITY AND DIVERSITY ON THE PERI-URBAN FRONTIER
In Ghana, as elsewhere in Africa, recent acquisitions of rural land have brought a variety of new resources – money, people, physical assets and enterprises – into rural areas, as well as displacing those that were there before. In some cases, residents whose farms have been converted to building lots continue to live in the same village, seeking alternative sources of income in non-farm employment or hiring themselves out to neighbouring farmers. In part this trend reflects families' growing need for income to pay for utilities, health care and schooling formerly provided by the state, but returns to farming have also declined, thanks in no small part to the dismantling of subsidies and services under structural adjustment. Studies in Ghana and elsewhere report that rural households are becoming increasingly reliant on off-farm income to augment or sustain their livelihoods. Some people have earned enough outside of farming to increase their total income, acquire a few assets, and invest in modest improvements to their farms. For the majority, however, off-farm earnings served merely to offset declining returns to their farms, while the poorest spent so much time off-farm, and earned so little, that they had to give up farming altogether.Footnote 4
Declining returns to farming might be expected to dampen people's eagerness to acquire rural land, but in many areas the opposite seems to have occurred. In the face of broad uncertainty about future economic prospects, not only in agriculture but across the economic spectrum, land appears to offer relative stability – physically fixed (though its quality may change) and likely to increase (or fall less) in value over time, relative to other forms of property. In recent years, rural land has attracted growing numbers of people for whom farming is, at most, a subsidiary interest. In addition to long-standing patterns of smallholders moving to open or expand their farms, many urban-based individuals and institutions have invested in acquiring tracts of rural land. Some plant trees or annual crops to secure their claims by demonstrating effective possession (Besley Reference Besley1995; cf. Gray and Kevane Reference Gray and Kevane2001; Mathieu et al. Reference Mathieu, Zongo, Paré, Benjaminsen and Lund2003); others experiment with ‘modern’ methods of farming, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Still others let their land lie idle, speculating that its value will rise over time, and relying on personal and/or political connections to defend their claims against any who might challenge them in the meantime.Footnote 5
While urban-based individuals experiment with farming or speculate in rural land, African cities themselves are spreading further and further into the countryside, absorbing farmlands and villages along ever-expanding peri-urban frontiers. Long characterized as overwhelmingly rural, sub-Saharan Africa is now experiencing some of the highest rates of urban growth in the world. According to the UN, 40 per cent of Africa's population now lives in urban areas, and the figure is projected to rise to 60 per cent by 2050 (UNEP/UN–Habitat 2010). While high-rise buildings are beginning to appear in some metropolitan centres, most urban expansion has been horizontal, absorbing farmland and villages in widening circles of suburban sprawl. In the mid-1990s, one study described villages located 15 miles or more outside Accra where ‘residential development now overshadows all other forms of land use’ (Kasanga et al. Reference Kasanga, Cochrane, King and Roth1996: 36). Like permanent crops, buildings help to strengthen acquirers' claims to the land, and one- or two-storey houses are quicker and cheaper to build than other kinds of structures.Footnote 6
Recent patterns of rural land acquisition in Ghana also reflect people's changing engagements with the global economy. Thousands of Ghanaians left the country during the long economic slump of the 1970s and 1980s, many moving to the then-booming economies of Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire, and further afield to Europe and North America when neighbouring economies also foundered in the 1980s. Often overqualified for the menial jobs they obtained, many emigrants found that they still earned more than they had as professionals in Africa – enough to live comfortably and send money home.Footnote 7 The bulk of their remittances were used to supplement relatives' daily expenses or pay school fees, but a number of emigrants managed to set some money aside for investment. A study of emigrant professionals from Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire reported that Ghanaians showed a strong preference for investing in land and houses, while Ivoirians were more inclined to put money into starting a business at home (Ammassari Reference Ammassari2004; cf. Kabki, Mazzucato and Appiah Reference Kabki, Mazzucato and Appiah2004; Mazzucato, Kabki and Smith Reference Mazzucato, Kabki and Smith2006). Contrary to the image often presented in Western media, emigrants frequently located these houses on the outskirts of major urban areas, rather than in their ancestral villages. While most Ghanaians can name their home towns, many admit they have never been there, and those with the means to build prefer to do so in peri-urban areas where land is cheaper than in the city, but still relatively close to urban centres (Berry Reference Berry2006; de Witte Reference de Witte2001: 82).
Physically, many peri-urban neighbourhoods appear as disorderly frontiers of urban expansion, where housing construction runs ahead of infrastructure and building codes are ignored. Socially, they are sites of intersection among people, resources, activities and ideas on the move, coalescing, colliding or dispersing in a kind of restless straddling in which some find prosperity, while others struggle to make ends meet. In one peri-urban settlement I studied on the outskirts of Kumasi a few years ago, I was struck not only by the number of people I spoke to who commuted to work or trade in the city, or came and went at longer intervals, pursuing careers and connections in other parts of Ghana or abroad, but also by the socio-economic diversity of the commuting population. Next to long-term residents who were no longer able to support themselves by farmingFootnote 8 lived teachers, clerical workers, civil servants and students who came there to find affordable housing. Some rented rooms from local residents; others lived in houses owned by their relatives. In one house occupied entirely by ‘tenants’, residents included a young man who was working as a teacher to fulfil his national service obligations, two unemployed housewives whose husbands lived and worked elsewhere, and two unmarried women who said they were learning a trade (sewing in one case, hairdressing in the other). One of the young wives was related to the house owner – a sailor based in the port of Tema – and paid no rent; others depended on a husband or relative to pay for them (Berry Reference Berry2006).
Not all commuters came from the city. As their need for off-farm income increased, rural dwellers spent much of their time travelling into the city to work, trade or shop, and returning to the village to eat, bathe and sleep. Some had established businesses or held salaried jobs and were doing fairly well. Others were visibly poor: a number of older women, in particular, were struggling to support unemployed children and grandchildren out of their meagre proceeds from petty trade or sales of cooked food in Kumasi's sprawling central market. Asked whether it was worth the journey if, as often happened, she returned empty-handed in the evening, one woman pointed out that, even if she didn't sell the food she prepared, she had ‘something to feed the children’ in the evening (cf. Clark Reference Clark1999, Reference Clark2010). A larger survey carried out in Accra, Berekum and Kumasi in 1993 found that a substantial proportion of the sampled population lived rent-free in houses owned by their better-off kin (Tipple et al. Reference Tipple, Korboe and Garrod1997a: 113, Reference Tipple, Korboe and Garrod1997b: 893).
Peri-urban areas have long been cited as areas of encounter and tension between rural and urban lifestyles (McCaskie Reference McCaskie2000; Simone Reference Simone2004) – processes intensified by accelerating rates of internal and transnational migration (see, among others, Manuh Reference Manuh2005; Berry Reference Berry2006). As the following case history illustrates, they are also sites of transformation in institutions and practices of local governance (cf. Le Meur, Bierschenk and Floquet Reference Le Meur, Bierschenk and Floquet1999; Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan Reference Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan1998; Bierschenk et al. Reference Bierschenk, Chauveau and Olivier de Sardan2000; Lund Reference Lund2008; Juul Reference Juul, Juul and Lund2002).
‘THEY'RE ORGANIZED’: DEVELOPMENT AND GOVERNANCE IN A RURAL TOWN
Located about 25 km east of Kumasi, Juaben is the capital of an old Asante polity and a paramount stool of the Ashanti Region.Footnote 9 Like many rural towns and peri-urban neighbourhoods in Ghana, Juaben is a crossroads – a social space where movements of people and resources out of agriculture intersect with the forces of urbanization and movements of urban-based people and resources into rural areas to acquire land and diversify their assets. Much has been written about relations between newcomers and long-term residents or ‘autochthones’ in rural areas, many accounts tracing a familiar trajectory from mutual agreement to antagonism as pressure on land increases and immigrants cease to acknowledge the authority of the ‘firstcomers’ who preceded them, and by whom they were allowed to settle.Footnote 10 Somewhat less attention has been paid to concurrent alterations in modes of organizing economic activity or governing people's relations with one another and with things. The recent history of development and governance in Juaben illustrates the kinds of experimentation involved, and the ways in which spheres of ‘public’ and ‘private’ authority and obligation are being reworked in the process.
Juaben first came to my attention in 1994 when I was carrying out research on the history of land claims in Kumawu, another rural town in the Ashanti Region. Deeply divided by long-running internal disputes over land and chieftaincy, Kumawu had little to show in the way of economic or infrastructural development. Twenty years into his tenure on the stool in 1994,Footnote 11 the chief of Kumawu was still consolidating his position after a tumultuous beginning that landed him in jail for several months and sparked a protracted struggle, led by a number of the town's leading citizens, to unseat him (for details, see Berry Reference Berry2001). The main road through Kumawu was paved, but with broken edges; the electrical system worked, but water rarely flowed through the town pipes; and the principal market was several kilometres away in a subordinate village, which had long chafed at its traditional ‘allegiance’ to the paramount chief of Kumawu. Blaming sluggish development on political wrangling, Kumawufoכ underscored their complaints with a contrasting case: ‘If you want to see development,’ people told me, ‘you should go to Juaben: they're organized!’ Several years later, I followed their advice, curious to get a closer look at what my friends in Kumawu evidently viewed with admiration and no small amount of envy.Footnote 12
What I found was a community comparable in size and antiquity to Kumawu,Footnote 13 but strikingly different not only in terms of visible infrastructure, but also in the recent history of chiefly rule within the town. In contrast to Kumawu, the main road through Juaben was well paved and flanked by deep cement-lined gutters. The piped water supply was not only fairly regular, but also drinkable, thanks to a new treatment facility that began operation while I was there. Most striking, in sheer visual terms, was a brand new two-storey market, containing a number of closed shops as well as stalls and vending spaces in an adjacent paved courtyard. In the echelons of local government, Juaben was somewhat overshadowed by Ejisu, a bustling town on the main road to Accra that had garnered the position of official headquarters for the Ejisu-Juaben District Administration and Assembly, much to the chagrin of Juaben's notables. Within Juaben (and again in contrast to Kumawu), the reins of local government were firmly concentrated in the hands of the paramount chief – a vigorous middle-aged man with a university degree in civil engineering who, in 2002, had already been on the stool for thirty years, and gave every sign of remaining there for years to come.
By his own and most of my informants' accounts, the chief had spearheaded the town's infrastructural development, drawing on his training in civil engineering, together with an extensive network of political contacts in state government and the ‘parallel’ edifice of ‘traditional authority’, to leverage government resources for local development, and strengthen his own reputation for ‘enlightened’ traditional leadership. ‘Upon my installation [as chief],’ he wrote later, ‘one thing that struck me most was the extremely weak finances of the traditional authority.’Footnote 14 Accordingly, he set out to expand the stool's revenue base – developing the local economy, working to strengthen traditional authority within and beyond Juaben, while, at the same time, investing in a variety of enterprises on his own account. By 2002, he had constructed an interlocking complex of facilities and enterprises in Juaben – some privately owned, some in the public domain, and others straddling the two in ways that were difficult to unravel.
The politics of public investment
Installed as Juabenehene in 1971, Nana Otuo Siriboe demonstrated a keen ear for prevailing policy rhetoric. His ‘First Five Year Plan’ for the development of Juaben included a paved road, to be built by the central government, connecting the town directly to the nearest trunk road from Kumasi to Accra. Citing customary chiefly prerogative, the chief also summoned Juabenfoכ to contribute ‘communal labour’ to construct the town's first public toilets and dig drainage ditches along the road through the centre of town, then cited their efforts to lever money and materials from the state in order to complete the toilets. According to an admirer who visited the chief's farm at about this time, the chief ‘himself wielded the machete, generally a taboo for the educated, akrakyefo, joked with the hands, made sure that they were reasonably well-fed and, since none could leave the field while he himself remained … he got more hours of solid work from the “by day” labourers than usual’ (Arhin Reference Arhin2001: 1167).
The chief's penchant for public performance has continued to draw attention to Juaben, contributing to its reputation for successful development. Melding customary authority with contemporary rhetoric of ‘participatory development’, he used ‘communal labour’ to leverage external material and financial support, being careful to publicize the results. In a laudatory editorial written five years later, the Daily Graphic singled out Juaben as an example of ‘the wisdom and intrinsic value of the [government's] policy of self-reliance’, writing with unabashed hyperbole that ‘one traditional area in Ashanti … can afford to congratulate and adore itself on the spectacular achievement of successfully executing gigantic development projects launched … five years ago’ (Daily Graphic, 4 July 1977).
How far Juabenfoכ shared the reporter's sentiments was not easy to assess. Employees of the chief's enterprises were understandably enthusiastic; others agreed with the woman who commented that ‘the chiefs concentrate on their own circle: they don't concern themselves with the people as a whole’. Many were noncommittal, enumerating the amenities that had come to town and listing others they hoped to see in the future. Unlike Kumawu or other towns where residents complained openly that chiefs sold land but were indifferent to their needs, in Juaben, people were more likely to detail their own affairs than dwell on local politics. Whether this reflected satisfaction or reluctance is difficult to say.
As his reputation grew, the chief's activities spread beyond Juaben. Two years after the ‘outdooring’ of Juaben's new infrastructure projects in 1977, the Juabenhene was asked to represent his Ashanti colleagues in the Constitutional Commission convened in 1978 to draft a new constitution for Ghana's impending transition to civilian rule. As a member of that Commission he was instrumental in removing matters of chiefly succession from government control, and mandating that the Lands Commission establish a branch in every region to expedite land transactions by decentralizing the processing of documents (Ghanaian Times, 17 January 1979 and 6 April 1979). Since then, he has worked steadily to strengthen the role of custom and traditional authority on a national scale, drawing on his achievements in Juaben as well as his position as a paramount chief to advocate a leading role for traditional authority in modern Ghanaian development.
During the economic crisis of the 1980s, the chief's dual agenda – promoting economic development and strengthening traditional authority – did not change, but the manner of implementing it did. While continuing to seek constitutional recognition for chiefly authority over land and chieftaincy affairs, the Juabenhene also courted Ghana's business and professional elites, recruiting several of the latter for the Juaben Traditional CouncilFootnote 15 and using his position in the National House of Chiefs to lobby government on behalf of traditional rulers.Footnote 16 In 1992 he again participated in drafting the constitution for the Fourth Republic, and claims credit for strengthening language in Article 247 that weakened government control over traditional authority by giving chiefs exclusive jurisdiction over chieftaincy affairs.Footnote 17
As the economic crisis eased after 1985, investment in infrastructure revived, with continued active involvement on the part of the Traditional Council. At the same time, the chief's economic ventures took a new turn, branching into a series of initiatives in agro-industry and banking. Several of these projects involved combinations of ‘public’ and ‘private’ ownership and management that helped secure funding to get them going but also made it difficult to distinguish among the stakes and rewards of the various contributors. These ambiguities were, if anything, reinforced by linkages and complementarities among the goods produced, and by the chief's adroit invocation of the neo-liberal rhetoric of ‘ownership’ to market traditional authority to the World Bank.Footnote 18 Examples include Juaben Farms Ltd, Juaben Oil Palm Outgrower Cooperative Scheme and the Juaben Market. In addition, two privately owned enterprises – Juaben Rural Bank and Juaben Oil Mills, Ltd – are owned primarily by members of the royal family and the Juaben Traditional Council.
Juaben Rural Bank
Part of a national programme to mobilize rural savings for agricultural investment by establishing banks in rural areas, the Juaben Rural Bank opened in 1984, with an initial capital of ⊄1,000,000.Footnote 19 Large blocks of the initial shares were purchased by two agents – the Juaben Traditional Council and Vanguard Assurance Ltd, a private company founded by Nana Awuah Darko Ampem, a son of Juaben.Footnote 20 By 2002, the Bank's capital had grown to ⊄70,000,000, one third held by the same two principal shareholders. At first, the Rural Banks gave crop advances to cocoa farmers, expecting them to be repaid out of farmers' sales to the state-controlled Cocoa Marketing Board, but farmers easily evaded repayment, and most banks stopped these loans after a couple of losing seasons (Berry Reference Berry1997: 1231). In 2002, the majority of depositors at the Juaben Rural Bank were civil servants, teachers or pensioners, whose salaries and stipends were paid through the Rural Bank. As of July 2002, roughly 50 per cent of the Bank's assets consisted of loans to local borrowers: one large loan to an oil palm outgrower scheme (see below) and a number of much smaller loans to individual farmers, traders, petrol dealers, artisans and bank depositors. Interest rates were comparable to those charged by commercial banks, varying between 32 and 36 per cent per annum for loans to farmers, traders and ‘cottage industries’, and rising to 10 per cent per month for funeral expenses. Rather than fostering egalitarian development, the Rural Banks operate on commercial principles, catering to those with substantial assets and/or teachers and others with low but guaranteed salaries.
Juaben Oil Mills, Ltd
Unlike their counterparts in countries such as Kenya, chiefs in Ghana are not civil servants: they receive no salary from the state, but are supposed to support themselves with private means. Early in his tenure, the Juabenhene decided to leave civil engineering, the profession for which he had been trained, and become a farmer – explaining that ‘Juaben is an agrarian area’ and reasoning, perhaps, that as chief he would have no difficulty gaining access to land and labour. During the 1970s, he established a large farm in Juaben, growing food crops and oil palm and, in 1984, built a factory to manufacture palm oil from fruit purchased from local growers. Local supplies proved to be unreliable, however, so in 1989, the firm acquired equipment for crushing oilseeds such as palm kernels, shea nuts and peanuts. By 2002, much of the mill's business was done on contract with Unilever rather than local farmers, receiving oilseeds from and disposing of its entire output of shea nut and palm kernel oil to the multinational. Steadier and more profitable than its palm oil operation, the oilseed crushing business was expected to provide 75 per cent of the mill's revenue from oilseeds in 2002, compared to 25 per cent from sales of locally grown palm fruit.Footnote 21
Equity for the stool
Pursuit of his personal business interests did not distract the chief from his goal of strengthening the stool's finances. Like chiefs throughout Asante and many other parts of Ghana, the Juabenhene holds allodial title to lands that were historically attached, and are now constitutionally ‘vested’, in his stool (see, among others, Berry Reference Berry2001; Kasanga and Kotey Reference Kasanga and Kotey2001; Woodman et al. Reference Woodman, Wanitzek and Sippel2004). What exactly this means in terms of jurisdictional boundaries and chiefly prerogative are matters of ‘custom’ and debate. Legally, chiefs are entitled to be ‘consulted’ when plots of land within their jurisdictions are leased or sold, and they retain allodial title to such land after it changes hands. Since the early 1990s, the state has charged traditional authorities with responsibility for collecting ground rent on behalf of the state from landholders in their areas, but they are not required to keep formal accounts, and officials complain that ground rent is rarely paid. They are also not required to keep accounts of the ‘gifts’, commonly known as ‘drinks’, that they receive from ‘grateful’ buyers for giving their approval to land transactions. In principle, these gifts are purely symbolic, meant to acknowledge the chief's continued ‘allodial title’ to the land, but in practice the amounts involved are large. If the chief allocates land directly, the ‘drinks’ are equivalent to the going price of land in that area. If the land already belongs to a family or individual, the buyer remits the market price to the owner, but may also be expected (or pressured) to give a handsome present to the chief.Footnote 22
‘Drinks’ money is not meant to augment the chief's personal income, but belongs to the stool or chiefly office: it should be used for the upkeep of the stool and/or the benefit of its ‘subjects’. The stool is governed by the chief and the Traditional Council, so it is up to them to decide how the money should be handled. Since there is no formal mechanism for public accounting of the amounts involved, in practice, it is left to the chief to decide whether to report the amounts received to the elders or anyone else.Footnote 23 In general, this arrangement works to obscure – at times erase – the line between a chief's personal revenues and those of the stool. As land values rose, obfuscation of the divide between the chief's property and the public purse proved a fertile source of discontent, leading to frequent litigation, sometimes to violent conflict.Footnote 24
Ever alert to potential revenues for the stool, the Juabenhene has encouraged emigrant townspeople and others to acquire plots and put up houses in Juaben. He has also invoked his customary authority over stool lands and ‘communal labour’ to claim part ownership of facilities that were financed with public funds and/or acquired from the state as part of the divestment programme launched in the 1990s under the structural adjustment programme.Footnote 25 In each of these projects, the stool was represented by the Juaben Traditional Council – a legal entity with capacity to enter into contracts with other agencies and/or legal persons. As seats on the Council fell vacant on the incapacitation or death of their former occupants, the Juabenhene has used his position to recruit individuals with professional and/or international experience to replace them and persuaded their families to ratify his selections. By 2002, seven of the nine sub-chiefs I interviewed had worked as teachers, accountants, businessmen or technicians; two had lived abroad.
Juaben Farms, Ltd
In 1984, when plans to establish the Rural Bank were under way, the Traditional Council turned its attention to the Juaben Oil Palm Plantation, a state-owned enterprise established in the 1970s when large commercial farms featured prominently in development policy, and since fallen into decline (see, for example, Konings Reference Konings1986). In the new policy environment of structural adjustment, the chiefs saw opportunity in the derelict farm. Mobilizing local farmers to begin rehabilitating the plantation with communal labour, the chief and Traditional Council once again presented the state with evidence of Juaben's willingness to help itself (Ghanaian Times, 17 February 1984). Once initial funding was obtained, trees were planted, maintained and harvested with hired labour – paid by the job rather than by the day ‘to increase productivity’ – and production increased.
A few years later, when government began to privatize formerly state-owned assets, the Traditional Council put in a bid to purchase the plantation. Of the shares, 70 per cent were sold to private buyers – Juaben Rural Bank, Juaben Oil Mills, Vanguard Assurance, and a few individuals known to members of the Traditional Council – while the remaining 30 per cent was awarded to the Traditional Council, gratis, in recognition of the Juaben stool's customary authority over the land and the town's contribution of ‘communal labour’ to begin rehabilitation of the plantation even before divestment had taken place.Footnote 26
Just what this meant in terms of ownership of the farm was not entirely clear. Legally, the Traditional Council and the shareholders own the farm, but the Council and the chief – who took the lead in rehabilitating the farm in 1984, and acquiring it from the government in 1995 – like to represent it as a ‘community’ endeavor, undertaken by the Council for the benefit of all ‘Juaben citizens’.Footnote 27 A signboard at the entrance to the farm describes it as ‘A Joint Venture of the Juaben Traditional Council’ – a phrase that leaves open the question of who, besides the Council, is participating in the venture, on what terms.
Juaben Oil Palm Cooperative Outgrowers Society
The rehabilitation of Juaben Farms helped to stabilize the supply of raw materials to Juaben Oil Mills, but left the firm with a good deal of excess capacity. To fill the gap, in 1997, the chief and council launched what was arguably their most ambitious venture to date. Touting the need to alleviate poverty in the Juaben Traditional Area and citing Juaben Farms Ltd as evidence of the stool's managerial capability and commitment to development, the chief approached the World Bank with a proposal to establish an oil palm outgrower scheme in Juaben. After much discussion, the Bank agreed to a loan of US$700,000, managed by the Juaben Rural Bank and repayable over 15 years. To obtain a loan, a farmer signed a contract with the Rural Bank, agreeing to plant trees on his/her own land and manage them as instructed by the scheme's manager. When the trees matured, the farmer would sell the produce to Juaben Oil Mills, using part of the proceeds to pay back the loan. Once the debt was paid off, the farmer would be free to sell the trees, uproot them, or continue harvesting, keeping the proceeds for him or herself.
More than simply a farming enterprise, the Juaben Oil Palm Outgrowers' Cooperative Society (JOPOCS) was billed as a multi-faceted experiment in participatory development, social welfare and corporate governance. Community participation in the outgrower scheme is mediated through a complex tripartite governing structure consisting of the Rural Bank, Juaben Oil Mills and the Outgrowers' Cooperative Society. The ‘tripartite’, as it is commonly known, is in turn represented on the oversight committee, the governing body that sets policy for the scheme and makes major managerial decisions. Chaired by the managing director of Juaben Oil Mills, the committee includes the outgrower manager (a professional horticulturalist with twenty years' experience in government service), a member of the Traditional Council, and representatives of the participating farmers. In effect, the tripartite answers to itself.
During the first two years of the scheme's operation, 628 farmers (including 149 women) joined, planting a total of 1,094 hectares of oil palm seedlings in plots of two hectares or less.Footnote 28 Expenses soon outran available resources: the World Bank loan was exhausted within the first year, leaving the farmers without money to purchase recommended amounts of fertilizer for their immature trees or the promised ‘labour refund’ meant to tide them over until the trees matured. By the end of 2001, the tripartite was actively seeking additional outside support.
In deciding to grant the initial loan of $700,000, the World Bank had been drawn to the project's innovative combination of private initiative and public interest. Speaking at the inauguration ceremony in 1999, the Bank's representative enthused over ‘the unique way in which the partnership between farmers, a processing plant and a local bank come [sic] together to lift up the community to a higher level of social and economic development. The three parties work for the benefit of not only themselves but also for the common good of the community.’ Singling out the Juabenhene for ‘his far-sightedness and vision’, he enumerated the attributes – ‘the utmost wisdom of a traditional chief, the astute acumen of a businessman, the organized and calculating discipline of an engineer and the persuasive craft of a politician’ – which the chief had brought to bear ‘to get this scheme started’ (Bekure Reference Bekure1999). Applied to for a second round of funding at the end of 2001, the Agricultural Development Bank was less starry-eyed. ‘Your tripartite group security is not acceptable. Kindly provide additional acceptable security for [your requested] loan of $335,184’ (Agricultural Development Bank to Juaben Oil Mills, 31 December 2001). (Whether security had been found, or an additional loan received, was not evident at the time of my fieldwork.)
Juaben Market
A final example of institutional evolution under way in Juaben in mid-2002 was the new town market – an imposing two-storey structure of one-roomed shops with an adjacent paved courtyard, surrounded by roofed market stalls, with an open centre where vendors could lay out their wares on tables or spread them on the floor. The complex included spaces for toilets and a day-care centre, which were not yet operational in 2002. A few of the shops had been let but most were still unoccupied. On market days, the stalls and courtyard were filled with vendors, however, and many others displayed their wares in the streets and alleys outside the market complex. A market committee of local residents and traditional elders had been appointed by the Traditional Council to monitor daily use of the facility, organize the collection of market tolls, and handle complaints. In mid-2002, they were trying to recruit local women to clean the toilets so they could be opened for public use.
Plans to improve the old open-air market had been broached in the late 1980s. Hoping to attract new business to Juaben and generate revenue for the town, the Juabenhene and elders used their by now well-established strategy of initiating the project with communal labour, then appealing to donors and investors for funding to complete it. In this case, however, the chiefs broke new ground. Rather than invoke ‘self-help’ and chiefly prerogative to claim a stake in a private enterprise, as had been done with Juaben Farms, the Rural Bank, and the Outgrower Scheme, in this case the Traditional Council approached the District Assembly for funding – arguing that the town's contributions merited government support for a worthy development project, and that their role (providing a site on stool land and mobilizing communal labour to help with the work) entitled them to part-ownership of what would be primarily a public facility. To give concrete form to their claims to joint ownership, the Council added a second storey to the partly refurbished main market building – first purchasing materials and summoning fellow-citizens for ‘communal labour’ to complete the structure, then presenting it to the District Assembly as a fait accompli.
A major share of funding for the market was actually provided by the World Bank, supplemented by contributions from the District Assembly. Like the Traditional Council, district officials viewed their contribution as an investment, entitling them to a share of revenue from shop rents and market tolls. Mindful of impending negotiations over the division of market revenue between the Council and the District Assembly, the chief gave tactical support to the district's claims. Appealing to the government Ministry of Food and Agriculture for funds from a World Bank grant for improving village infrastructure to complete paving around the market, the chief emphasized that, once the market was completed, it would yield revenue for the district as well as the stool.Footnote 29 With both local government and traditional authorities poised to reap gains from the new facility, pending negotiations over the division of ownership promised to be lively.
‘RECOMBINANT PROPERTY’? CUSTOM, NEO-LIBERALISM AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PERFORMATIVE ACCUMULATION
By the turn of the millennium, Juaben had accumulated a portfolio of development projects and enterprises in which ambiguities of ownership paralleled ambiguities of authority and jurisdiction that date from the colonial period and have been reinforced by donor-backed schemes of market liberalization and political ‘reform’ (see, among others, Berry Reference Berry2001; Amanor Reference Amanor1999; Ubink and Amanor Reference Ubink and Amanor2008). Searching for willing ‘partners’ in its efforts to liberalize African states as well as markets, the World Bank explored the ranks of non-state actors in Africa's ‘civil societies’. In 2003, officials at the Bank drafted a plan, ‘Promoting partnerships with traditional authorities’, that was meant to expedite market liberalization by tapping into a distinctively African form of political legitimacy. While Juaben's well-publicized developments in public infrastructure and utilities stand out in comparison to those of many other rural towns of comparable size, even a superficial look into the way these facilities are managed suggests that they are intertwined with the chief's enterprises and assets of the stool in ways that are difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle.
Juaben is often described as an example of successful development, but the evidence I collected there, though limited, suggests that the story is more complicated. The financial status of Juaben's development projects was somewhat opaque. Although the Juabenhene generously allowed me to consult materials in his personal archives, including files containing financial details of the Traditional Council's acquisition of Juaben Farms, Ltd and the Oil Palm Outgrower Scheme, I was unable to determine whether either of these enterprises earned a profit or, for that matter, whether loans received to finance them had ever been repaid.Footnote 30
Similar uncertainties surround the scope of chiefly authority and jurisdiction. In conversation, both the chief and others in Juaben sometimes referred to people and territory under the jurisdiction of the Juaben stool as the ‘Juaben Traditional Area’. When I asked about the difference between a Traditional Area and a Traditional Council, I was told that it is a matter of formal recognition. Traditional Councils are legal entities, capable of entering into formal contracts and liable for their debts. A Traditional Area, on the other hand, is a kind of metaphor: an expression of collective heritage or belonging among people whose ancestors swore allegiance to the same traditional authority.Footnote 31 Affiliation with a Traditional Area can be a source of considerable influence, depending on the circumstances, but its power is symbolic, not legal. Unable to acquire formal title to any kind of property, a Traditional Area is also exempt from legal accountability for its actions. As the Juabenhene himself explained, acting or making claims on behalf of a Traditional Area gives the claimant more freedom to exercise traditional prerogative in the pursuit of ‘modern’ ends than would be the case if he were to act in the legally defined capacity of a paramount chief or representative of a Traditional Council.
Ambiguities in the financial and legal status of development enterprises and chiefly authority extended to their beneficiaries. Control over public, private and recombinant assets appeared to be concentrated in the hands of the chiefs and a few wealthy individuals, and it was difficult to gauge residents' opinions of the way the town's affairs were conducted. While clearly the chief had played a major role in attracting outside resources to Juaben, many of those resources served his own business interests and/or those of the stool, or were conflated with public goods and services in ways that were difficult to unravel. Tangible investments went hand in hand with vigorous promotion of both ‘community’ and chiefs, so that the reputation of each tended to reinforce that of the other.
While Juaben cannot be said to ‘represent’ other communities in Ghana, its recent history illustrates aspects of political and economic change in Ghana as a whole. In 2002, rising land values, rapid land acquisition and residential construction were less evident in Juaben than in towns closer to Kumasi or the main road to Accra (Ubink Reference Ubink2008; Berry Reference Berry2006; Kasanga and Woodman Reference Kasanga, Woodman, Woodman, Wanitzek and Sippel2004), but that is likely to change as the peri-urban frontier moves outward. The high cost and limited supply of mortgage credit means that private investment in housing has been financed primarily out of personal savings, obliging the poor to live crowded together in tenement-like conditions or depend on the charity of relatives or neighbours, while giving rise to a substantial propertied ‘middle class’ and an increasingly ostentatiously wealthy elite.Footnote 32 Ironically, the persistence of multiple claims to land that has been sold, which tends to tie up resources in litigation and has been criticized for discouraging productive investment, may enable fairly widespread individual and family ownership of land and investment in housing, precisely because such owners' claims do not threaten either the state's rights of eminent domain, or the constitutionally guaranteed ‘allodial titles’ of the chiefs.
Because land remains subject to multiple claims even after it is sold, land holdings are vulnerable to encroachment, challenges from other ‘owners’, or sale by allodial title holders or the state. Such uncertainty helps to channel private savings into construction or cultivation which, because they are undertaken more to secure people's claims than to generate income, may be poorly managed and constructed. Such patterns of land use and investment serve, in turn, to reinforce the multiplicity of claims to land, and the interlocking edifice of ‘traditional’ and state authority that sustains and is sustained by it. While much remains to be learned about the way wealth and power circulate and grow within this template, my observations in Juaben echo Goldstein and Udry's more systematic findings in farming villages near Accra that investment in positions of social influence enable asset accumulation, as well as vice versa (Goldstein and Udry Reference Goldstein and Udry2008). Rather than replacing ‘wealth-in-people’ with wealth-in-things, market liberalization appears to have tightened connections between them. As far as I could tell, development and governance in Juaben were performative as well as material: modes of accumulation and control, in which property and power were fungible as well as recombinant, displayed for public effect but one or two steps ahead of accountability.
