Land policies for affordable housing in urban Ghana

With rapid urbanization, securing access to affordable and quality housing is becoming a key challenge for urban populations in Western Africa. In Ghana, the state retreated from direct housing provision in 1980s, favoring liberal measures aimed at enabling real estate markets. While these policies have led to a real estate boom in Ghana, it has mainly catered to upper-income groups, while low- and even middle-income groups have struggled with reliably securing a dwelling through market means. Besides construction costs, the largest hurdle in accessing affordable housing is to secure land. Access to Land in Ghana is regulated by both customary and statutory institutions, which resulted in the emergence of vernacular markets as one of the primary means of acquiring land, especially in urban centres. This complex institutional configuration results in ambiguous property rights and insecure tenure due to informational asymmetry, high transaction costs, and power imbalances. Although the Ghanaian state has recognized these challenges, there are yet no effective urban planning and development policies that address these issues. This fragmented policy framework, coupled with weak, siloed interventions in urban planning, highlights the need for a more strategic combination of political and legal instruments, rather than relying solely on planning, to uncover potential solutions to the affordability crisis in Ghana.