Ghana - Agriculture - Land Tenure

In the 20 communities visited, the total number of households interviewed was 2450. From the onset all of the 20 communities in the sample were divided into two groups - treatment and control. These two groupings were made in reference to a major road dividing each community into two halves - left and right, that is when travelling from Kasoa (a major town on the Accra-Cape Coast Highway) to Bawjiase (an important market center in the study area). Households who dwell on the left and within a band of 100 meters from the major road were considered as treatment. The control group was further divided into two sub-groups: short term and long term. The short term control group consisted of households located in the first 100-meter band on the right hand side of the major road. The long term control group consisted of households whose dwellings were located within the next 500 meter band from the road after the short term control band. The treatment group was supposed to receive land titling for their parcels of land at a nominal fee of 1 Ghana Cedi. Aside from the land titles given to the treatment group, 300 women each from the treatment and control groups were given financial literacy training. The effects of the interactions between the two interventions are also examined.

An approximate random sample of 800 households was drawn from each of the three sub-groups described above. However after the baseline data collection the households which were actually interviewed were a bit higher than those targeted. The number of participating households reduced a bit in the follow-up survey and at the end line. This drop in the sample at the follow-up and end line rounds of survey were mainly due to relocation, death of participants and refusal of households to continue participation.


Difficulties and deviations from the standard field plan
The initial target was to reach 800 households appease for treatment, short term and long term groups. The realised outcome was 792 of the treatment, 866 of the short term and 866 of the long term. It was extremely difficult to get as many households for the treatment and hence the short fall of about 8 households.

In carrying out the interviews, the household roster was supposed to be filled in the presence of both the head and spouse(s). However there were so many practical constraints in terms of meeting the couple at the same time at home. Therefore this assumption was relaxed to accommodate situations where the female spouse was available and then when the male returns, his interview is used to confirm the list given by the wife.

The idea that each respondent must necessarily have control over a piece of land before qualifying to be interviewed was discarded and interviews were solely based on whether the household resides in the various diameter ranges defined by the GPS.

Substitution of Households and Reasons for Substitution
In all about thirty-six households in the long term control group around the Ofakor area was replaced based on evidence from the GPS that they fell outside the 1000m radius as defined by the survey set-up. These households have been dropped from the final data set.

Other Occurrences
In the given period of time it was impossible to finish marking all the 3000 farms of the households by the 6 plot mapping team members. Therefore after the whole data collection exercise, another set of thirty plot mapping team was sent to the field for ten days to mark the rest of the plots and farms. Each member of this team did an average of about 50 plots for the
ten-day period including travel time.