Since the early part of the 20th century, succeeding governments, including the colonial administration have sought to exert state control and management over lands in the country. Legislations were therefore introduced providing sweeping state control on natural resources (including timber and precious minerals), land use, enhanced powers of expropriation and the assumption of the managerial and powers of customary land owners. These legislations were not drawn in consultation with stakeholders.

The land policy development framework has not been comprehensively formulated. Past policies have been ad hoc and derived without adequate consultation with landowners. Even though a land policy has been prepared recently, implementation could be problematic and unsustainable because of the weak capacity and capability of the land sector institutions to initiate and coordinate policy actions among themselves and traditional authorities. Intractable land disputes between the State and the Customary land owning groups and within communities still remain.

Another problem that the land sector has to grapple with is the growing population in both rural and urban communities; the diminishing availability of land, inter and intra regional migration and urbanisation, which has contributed strongly to a growing demand for land throughout the country.

These problems and pressures have resulted in the following:

• Inflationary increases of the prices of land and property.
• Uncertainty in the land delivery system.
• A lack of transparency and distortions in the land markets.
• General indiscipline in the land market characterised by the current state of land encroachments, multiple sales of residential parcels, unapproved schemes and haphazard development.
• Corruption and failure of the public land agencies to develop and implement policies and regulations to improve the land economy, therefore undermining national and international investor confidence in the land and other sectors of the economy.
• Multiplicity of laws, which makes the laws unnecessarily complicated and difficult to operate.
• Non-payment of compensation which tends to promote conflicts.

The land economy of Ghana has many paradoxes, the prominent perhaps is the duality that exists between the customary system of land tenure and administration, and a state system which is seeking to develop a more internationally market oriented economy for the country.

There is also a dualism that exists between customary and state law, as well as the informal and formal economies. The tension between the two economies is prevalent in many aspects of land management and administration.

This situation is compounded by the fact that the two systems have many commonalities and overlaps. The extent of overlap means the extension goes beyond whether the systems can merely continue to coexist and operate exclusively or whether they should be merged in a unique new hybrid model developed for Ghana. These are significant challenges for the land sector to address.