Many concerns have been raised about the negative impacts arising from land-based investments in Ghana. In an effort to help address the concerns and mitigate a future occurrence of the impacts, the Lands Commission developed the Guidelines for Large Scale Land Acquisition. The Lands Commission Guidelines were designed to provide guidance to investors, traditional leaders, and inhabitants of project communities and the Lands Commission Officers, on what to do in order to facilitate land acquisition for commercial investments in a responsible manner.

This is in recognition of the fact that under the current legislative and institutional framework for land governance in Ghana, each of these actors have a role to play in the arrangements for the acquisition, documentation and registration of land rights. Therefore, any attempt at addressing the negative impacts experienced from land acquisitions for investment purposes should involve all these actors.

In addition to the Lands Commission Guidelines, COLANDEF and Landesa also prepared Guidebooks for Socially Responsible Investments in Ghana. While the Lands Commission Guidelines provided the high-level information on what to pay attention to, the COLANDEF/ Landesa Guidebooks provided details on how to manage the process in achieving socially responsible investments.

To equip community level actors to be in the position to use the guidance provided in these two documents to achieve socially responsible investments, the principles and guidance are consolidated and summarized in this document for ease of reference and application.

Download it here.