The 15 th AfRES ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2015 242 LARGE LAND ACQUISITIONS PHENOMENON IN GHANA: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW JOSEPH KWAKU KIDIDO 1 , JONATHAN ZINZI AYITEY, DAVID AKELUMBONA AYARIGA Department of Land Economy, College of Art and Built Environment, KNUST Kumasi-Ghana The challenges of the twenty-frst century are enormous. Ensuring adequate food supply, energy, secure livelihoods, water among a host of essental needs of mankind have remained a dauntng challenge of many governments across the world. Land is emerging as the point of atracton to solving the many problems emanatng from the increasing populaton. The scramble for land by both the poor and the rich at the household, local and natonal levels has in recent tmes become a topical issue in both local and internatonal politcal discourses. Ghana has not been insulated from this new paradigm of land scramble and thus far has had its fair share. It is ranked fourth among the top ten countries in the world targeted for mixed deals (agro fuels and other purposes) with 421, 808 ha of agricultural land already under acquisiton contract. This paper takes a historical view of large land trade in Ghana from the pe- riod of colonial tmes to the current democratc dispensaton. Using secondary data, the study found that the recent large land acquisiton is not a new phenomenon in Ghana. It occurred in Ghana during the colonial era. The customary land owners have been the key suppliers of land in this land enterprise during both the colonial era and the period afer the independence. There is a greater recogniton of customary claims to land by the state through consttutonal and policy enactments. This recog- niton however falls short of regulatng the customary authorites in their land dispo- sitons especially rural land which are of much interest to the investors. It has thus created a lacuna in the land control arrangement by the state which has lef the cus- tomary authorites to engage large land alienatons without adequate controls. It is recommended that, eforts be made by government to provide enough structures at the local level to supervise and control land alienatons by the customary authorites. Key words: Large land acquisitons, Historical, Ghana 1. Corresponding author: jkidido@yahoo.co.uk