Sustaining decentralized collaborative governance arrangements in Africa: a case study of land management committees in the Upper West Region, Ghana

Sustaining collaboration in decentralized land governance has become the center of attention in land discourse due to the evolving realities and diverse interest involved in hybrid land governance systems in Africa. Drawing theoretical insights from collaborative governance, this study examined the formation and sustainability of Land Management Committees under Ghana's Land Administration Project. Using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, the study found that facilitative traditional leadership, inclusiveness, context driven approaches and transparency and accountability sustains decentralized collaborative arrangements for land governance. Whilst the collaborative governance literature acknowledges that in some instances, strong trust may serve as a disincentive to collaboration, this study has shown that strong trust through social capital could actually serve as the foundation for sustaining collaborative systems. Also, this study has shown that it is possible to sustain collaboration when collaborative policies are situated within the cultural context of stakeholders and empower groups to abide by the principles of transparency and accountability through effective traditional leadership. We recommend that there should be regulated flexibility in the operationalization of collaborative arrangements in order to ensure that they are context dependent for their sustainability to be assured.