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Planning has failed to exert effective influence on the growth of human settlements in Ghana. As a result, the growth of cities has been chaotic. The district assemblies, which are the designated planning authorities, are commonly blamed for this failure, yet little attention has been given to district assemblies’ perspectives of what factors lead to failures in planning. This paper attempts to fill this gap. Drawing on fieldwork in Ghana, it argues that, from the perspective of district assemblies, five major challenges inhibit planning, namely: an inflexible land ownership system, an unresponsive legislative framework, undue political interference, an acute human resource shortage, and the lack of a sustainable funding strategy. The paper concludes with proposals for reforming the planning system in Ghana

In order to develop effective policies to improve conditions for people working in the informal sector of the economy, it is crucial to understand how that sector arises, operates and relates to the state. This paper analyses the informal sector in Ghana from this perspective, drawing insight from a wide range of sources such as radio and newspaper accounts to overcome the dearth of official information on the subject. The analysis shows the limits of various approaches that have aimed at revamping the informal sector. It puts the case for a more comprehensive approach to the informal sector than has been evident in previous policies towards the urban economy.

Africa's hitherto negative image is now being rapidly replaced by a new persona: 'Africa on the rise'. Developed mainly from Africa's growth experience, this re-imaging of Africa has generated considerable interest even among Africanists concerned that the continent has often been the target of crisis jokes. Even more notably, the rebranding of Africa has gained traction in corridors of power and centres of finance. For this latter group, however, the narrative signals more than a cultural repackaging. It is about confirming that Africa is ripe and ready to host investment and to open up markets in areas where they did not exist or existed but were not capitalist in form. Either way, however, the 'Africa on the rise' narrative achieves a major political and economic goal. Neglecting ethical questions about sustainable jobs, inequality and ecological crisis, while extolling the virtues of capital accumulation, it extends a particular neoliberal ideology which favours people with market power, not the majority with precarious positions or their relationship with nature.

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So, in this book, my focus is on stratification in the Global South or what Frantz Fanon (1961) called "the wretched of the earth"; their experiences of appalling economic inequalities; the dire implications for society, economy, and environment; why this compartmentalization continues to deepen; and what can be done about it. Analytically, the focus on stratification provides a more comprehensive approach to studying the Global South because the concern about stratification leads to additional questions about inequality in relation to whom, what, where, why, and how, and hence throws the searchlight on the bigger question of "economic backwardness" in the Global South. According to Alude Mahali and her colleagues (2018, p. 3), we should understand the Global South to be "the countries of Africa, Central and Latin America, the Pacific and Carribean islands, and most of Asia." I accept this geographical interpretation of the phrase, but I apply it in a broader sense to include those social relations in the Global North that resemble or shape conditions that pertain to geographical Global South (think of, for example, black Americans and the Indigenous peoples of Australia). Politically, the focus on the Global South emphasizes its revolutionary potential, as Samir

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The paper examines evidence on the reasons for inefficient land management in Ghana. It argues that the perceived custodians of land have consistently acted in their individual interest while successfully using a discourse of ‘communal’ to secure the backing of the colonial and post colonial state. Overall, the state has substantially promoted the interest of private capital. In turn, the ‘public good’ outcomes the current land policies ostensibly seek to achieve have only been modestly achieved. Instead, land policies have had perverse implications for weaker groups such as women and impacted cities negatively.