Battling with large-scale land acquisition in rural Ghana: What are the gendered coping and adaptation strategies employed by households in the Asutifi North District?

Context and background: This study is grounded in the ‘Resilience Theory’. It emerged in the 1970s from the research of Holling (1973) to help understand the capacity of ecosystems to persist in the community subject to perturbations (Folke et al., 2002). The term resilience was defined by Holling (1973) as “a measure of the resistance of systems and of their capability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables. Goal and objectives: This study examined the coping and adaptation mechanisms employed by men and women in response to land loss due to Newmont Gold Ghana Limited (NGGL) in the Asutifi North District. Methodology: The study employed the interpretivist approach to research. The primary methods employed were in-depth interviews and observation, which were facilitated by instruments such as an interview guide, an audio recorder, and an observation checklist. The purposive sampling procedure was used to select the research participants. For the analysis of data, the conventional content analysis approach was relied upon. Results:: The findings are that men and women who lost their farmlands employed a variety of short and long-term livelihood strategies. Men coped by engaging in activities such as casual work, tenant farming, migration to cities and towns, while women also engaged in selling water, firewood and relying on remittances. Strategies such as reducing spending, selling physical assets and reducing the number of times of eating were both embraced by men and women. As part of the long-term strategies, men engaged in activities such as vegetable growing, snail production, animal husbandry and tricycle and taxi businesses, while their female counterparts engaged in soap and tie and dye making. The common adaptation strategies included petty trading and backyard farming. It is argued that the young men and women need to be given skill training in the areas of wielding and fabrication, masonry, carpentry and hairdressing by the investor company while alternative lands are secured for older men and women who may be difficult to re-train.