i Parkia biglobosa - School of Forest Resources & Environmental ...

permission not only from Kandiga’s chief, but also acquired cooperation with both the
Kassena-Nankani District Assembly and the District Office of the Ghana Education
Service (GES) located 20 km away in Navrongo. A family had tenure rights to farm the
land allocated for the school but the chief suspended those rights in preference to building
the school.
Another example of the customary land tenure system involved acquiring the land
for the Kandiga CCFI Tree Nursery. The landholder gave the nursery the land for the
benefit of the community. Numerous capital improvements were made to the land such
as wells established, wire fencing enclosing the plot, toolshed built, and an irrigation
channel built leading from the reservoir to the nursery. An agreement signed by the
landholder, chief, community committee, and ADRA (who provided funds) stated the
nursery belonged to the community and if the nursery operation failed, the land and
attached effects would remain with the community. Legal documents such as land title,
private ownership, and registration are rare in northern Ghana but increasing as access to
land is decreasing.
In Kandiga, and rural areas of northern Ghana, the landholders are individuals,
families, and the tendamba (the pioneer settler and his descendants). Another definition
of tendamba or Tengan-sob by the Dagaaba tribe in northern Ghana is the one who
‘posesses the hoe’, the spiritual caretaker of all the land resources, and holds land in trust
for the whole community (Bakang and Garforth 1998). The tendamba traditionally
allocated the rights to land. Colonial government introduced ‘chieftancy’ to organize the
northern regions in Ghana. The chief acts as liaison and spokesman for the people to the
government. The traditional and customary functions of allocating rights to land by the
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