If you have been reading about Ghanaian conveyancing, there is a good chance you have been reading about a repealed statute.
The Conveyancing Act is no longer the law
The Conveyancing Act 1973 (NRCD 175) governed how interests in land were transferred in Ghana for nearly fifty years. It was repealed by the Land Act 2020 (Act 1036), along with the Land Title Registration Law 1986 (PNDCL 152) and a number of other statutes.
Act 1036 consolidated the whole area — conveyancing, registration of deeds and titles, compulsory acquisition, and the management of public lands — into a single Act.
Most online advice about Ghanaian land law is out of date
A great deal of what is published still cites NRCD 175 and PNDCL 152 as current. Some of it is lawyers’ articles written before 2020 and never revised. If a source you are relying on does not mention Act 1036, it predates the law it is describing.
This matters practically: the registration regime, the dispute procedure and several formalities changed.
What a valid conveyance needs
A transfer of an interest in land must be in writing and signed by the person making it, or by their lawfully authorised agent. An oral agreement to transfer land, however sincere and however many witnesses, does not do it.
In practice a transaction produces:
The indenture — the conveyance itself, describing the parties, the land, the interest and the consideration. It is a record of a transaction, not title.
A site plan signed by a licensed surveyor, showing boundaries and coordinates. An unsigned plan, or one from an unlicensed draughtsman, is not usable for registration.
Registration at the Lands Commission. Until the instrument is registered, your position is materially weaker.
— Indenture, and how it differs from title — The full buying process, step by step
Registration is what protects you
This is the point most first-time buyers miss, so it is worth stating flatly: an unregistered indenture is a receipt for a promise.
Ghana has historically run more than one registration regime — a deeds registry and a title registry, applying in different districts — which is part of why the position is confusing and why Act 1036 set out to consolidate it. What has not changed is the ranking of what you can hold:
- An allocation note from a chief or family — a step, not title
- A registered indenture — a recorded transaction
- A land title certificate — a registered right, and the strongest position
Get to the top of that list. People stop at the first rung because it is cheaper and quicker, and it is the reason double sales work.
What Act 1036 changed that you will actually notice
Land guards are criminalised. Act 1036 makes the use of force or violence in relation to land an offence with real penalties. Enforcement is a separate question from what the statute says, but the statute is now unambiguous.
Spousal interest is presumed. Where land is conveyed to spouses, the Act presumes joint ownership unless the instrument says otherwise. If you are buying with a spouse, or buying from a married seller, this affects who has to sign.
Disputes go to ADR first. For land in a registration district, parties are required to exhaust the procedures under the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act 2010 (Act 798) before commencing an action. The old adjudication committee is gone.
Non-citizens still cannot hold freehold. Under article 266 of the Constitution a person who is not a Ghanaian citizen cannot hold a freehold interest, and a leasehold to a non-citizen is limited to fifty years at any one time. That is constitutional, not statutory, so Act 1036 did not and could not change it.
How land is actually held here
Most land in Ghana is customary — held by stools, skins, clans and families, with an allocation made by the traditional authority. It is not mainly state land and it is not mainly freehold in the way buyers from elsewhere assume.
That is why the seller’s authority to sell is the first thing to establish, and why a document signed by the wrong branch of the right family is a live risk rather than a theoretical one.
Get a lawyer, and get your own
The recurring, expensive mistake is using the seller’s lawyer, or the developer’s, or the one the agent recommends. Conveyancing in Ghana is not paperwork you can safely do from a template, and the cost of a lawyer is a small fraction of the cost of a contested plot.
What yours should do: search at the Lands Commission before money moves, verify the seller’s capacity to sell, check the site plan against what is on the ground, draft or review the indenture, and see the registration through to the certificate rather than to the receipt.
— Buying land in Ghana — Housing and land scams — Professional services in Accra — Ghana’s regulators
This is a guide, not legal advice. Land is the area where that distinction matters most in Ghana.