Determinants of sustainable customary land secretariats in Ghana: An economic modelling approach

Land reforms in sub-Saharan Africa are transiting customary land tenure into a neo-customary land tenure regime. Accordingly, the Government of Ghana, together with its development partners, initiated the establishment of customary land secretariats (CLSs) to enhance the governance of customary land administration at the local level. Though this initiative is implemented with advances, events on the ground suggest a growing trend of inactive or dysfunctional CLSs. Synergizing an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and descriptive statistics, we used monthly secondary data from the Berekum CLS to investigate the determinants of sustainable CLSs in Ghana. The analysis revealed that the most critical factors enhancing the sustainable performances of CLSs in the long and short term are the cost of documentation, the timely preparation and delivery of documents, and gender-related matters. Moreover, there was strong evidence of a long-run relationship between the studied variables. Despite the strives for equal land access, women are still less privileged in the acquisition of land. The study portends that should authorities aimed at bringing CLSs closer to the corridors of sustainability, the mandate of the Office of the Administrator of Stool Lands (OASL) and the Lands Commission (LC) should not just be the establishment of the CLSs but also ensuring their sustainability. A prioritization of the study’s findings by the OASL and the LC can enhance the patronage of CLSs in their established communities.