Habitat International 31 (2007) 257–267 Customary landholding institutions and housing development in urban centres of Ghana: Case Studies of Kumasi and Wa Raymond T. Abdulai à , Issaka E. Ndekugri School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Wolverhampton University, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1SB, UK Abstract In Ghana, land is vested in families and chiefs in the traditional land sector. These corporate bodies, referred to as customary landholding institutions control over 90% of the total land area in the country. The institutions therefore govern access to land. Urban centres in Ghana are plagued with a plethora of problems and one of them is inadequate housing. The urban housing problem is partly attributed to the existence and operation of the institutions. The customary landholding system is perceived as communal landownership, which does not permit individual ownership. It is thus argued that the system does not provide incentives for investing in housing development. This paper reports on a study carried out to test the assertion that the system does not permit individual ownership using two urban centres as case studies. The analysis shows that the operation of the institutions permits individual landownership. The traditional landownership system cannot therefore be the cause of the urban housing problem based on the premise that it does not permit individual ownership of land rights. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Customary landholding institutions; Communal landownership; Land rights; Housing development; Ghana Introduction In Ghana, the rate of urbanization over the last two or three decades has been rapid. The ratio of urban population to the total population in 1948 was 13% (Ghana Statistical Service, 2002). By 1970, this had increased to 29%; in 1984 the percentage had gone up to 31.3% whilst in 2000 the figure was 43.8% (Ghana Statistical Service, 2002). The causes of urbanization are mainly natural increase in the population of the urbanites and rural–urban drift. The massing of the population in urban centres certainly raises complex problems, among which is the issue of housing, the inadequacy of which has led to the burgeoning of slum settlements. Urban housing demand is currently estimated at 90,000 units per annum whilst the housing delivery is estimated at 37,000 housing units, creating a deficit of 53,000 housing units per annum (Amoa- Mensah, 2003). Ghana presently has an estimated urban housing deficit of 800,000 units (Asiamah, 2006). Evans and Whitehead (2006) and Abloh (1976) have aptly observed that numerous car garages, kitchens and stores of existing houses are being used as sleeping rooms in urban centres. ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint 0197-3975/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.habitatint.2007.02.004 à Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 7903 107947; fax: +44 1902 424460. E-mail addresses: talinberay@yahoo.com, rta@wlv.ac.uk (R.T. Abdulai), i.e.ndekugri@wlv.ac.uk (I.E. Ndekugri).