Poor land acquisition and resettlement are impoverishing Ghanaians, KNUST professor warns
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Prof Helen Essandoh of KNUST says failure to properly acquire land and resettle inhabitants for development projects is pushing many Ghanaians into poverty, even as infrastructure expansion continues.
The director of the Regional Transport, Research and Education Centre (TRECK) at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Professor Helen Michelle Korkor Essandoh, has observed that many people are being impoverished by the failure to properly acquire land and resettle inhabitants for development projects.
She said that although development projects are being executed across the country, some developers fail to properly acquire land and resettle affected persons, a situation that prevents such projects from yielding their maximum benefits.
"One key issue is land acquisition and involuntary resettlement. When it comes to land, people's lives are tied to land. They live at the place, grow up there and have their culture and social network all tied to these places," Professor Essandoh said.
According to her, people whose lands are taken for projects often lose more than just shelter, losing businesses, farmlands, resources and social networks that sustain them. She said the challenge is widespread in developing countries where rapid infrastructure expansion inevitably encroaches on inhabited communities, and that when affected people complain, it reduces the benefits expected from a project.
She spoke on the sidelines of a training programme organised by TRECK in collaboration with the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), with support from the World Bank. The professional certificate course covered Environmental and Social Risk Management with a focus on Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement, taking participants through eight modules including legal and institutional frameworks, planning land acquisition and involuntary resettlement, compensation, livelihood restoration and entitlements, stakeholder engagement, resettlement action planning and gender-based violence. GIMPA's representative, Dr Paul Rex Dankwah, urged participants to put the training into practice.