Urban Land Market in Ghana: A Study of the Wa Municipality

Abstract

This paper examines the land market in Ghana using the Wa municipality as a study area, an urban land market that is largely underdeveloped. The study employed questionnaires to collect data on how the land market in the municipality functions. It was found that this land market basically comprises undeveloped land and most of the land units are located in areas without basic infrastructure or services. Furthermore, customary land is efficiently allocated to competing uses and users. However, the market is bedevilled with problems such as multiple land sales and boundary disputes as a result of the unavailability of documentation on land transactions in the municipality. It suggests that state policy interventions, and not the institutional bureaucracy of land management, are required to address the inherent market problems.