Ghana needs TRUST laws to stop the theft of its Children’s Inheritance

By Agnes Akos Sowu, GIMPA Law School, Greenhill. Imagine this: a twenty-five-year-old in Labadi watches strangers build mansions on land his ancestors preserved. His community’s custodians disposed of it. The proceeds bought cars, funded extravagance and disappeared. He cannot afford a plot. His children will inherit stories about land that should have secured their future.

Elsewhere, galamsey swallows a girl’s family farm and poisons their river. Others take the gold. She inherits devastation. This is how a generation robs its descendants. A TRUST is a legal arrangement in which trustees hold and manage property for the benefit of others, called beneficiaries, or for a legally recognised purpose. Trustees must follow binding rules, avoid improper personal gain and account for their stewardship.

Breaches can attract court remedies. For Ghana, protection must extend to communities today and generations unborn. Other jurisdictions offer practical lessons. Britain’s National Trust holds designated land under restrictions preventing voluntary sale, preserving it for successive generations while allowing compatible uses. Alaska’s Permanent Fund invests mineral revenues under constitutional protection.

Norway channels petroleum income into a sovereign wealth fund, with spending guided by expected investment returns. Exhaustible resources thereby become financial assets capable of supporting future generations. These funds differ from ordinary private TRUSTS, but demonstrate the value of disciplined stewardship. Ghana’s Constitution already recognises fiduciary obligations over communal land and trusteeship over public land and minerals.

Those obligations must bite. Lawyers who knowingly help custodians squander communal assets do more than fail their profession: they help one generation disinherit the next. Parliament should enact a Land and Natural Resources Trusteeship Act, requiring community TRUSTS for substantial customary land transactions, protected accounts, independent audits, beneficiary representation and enforceable remedies, consistent with constitutional ownership and revenue arrangements.

The law must protect both land that should never be disposed of and proceeds from land lawfully developed. Mining operators must fund community benefits and separately secured rehabilitation obligations. Illegal mining demands prosecution. Publish transactions. Disclose conflicts. Empower beneficiaries to challenge abuse. Remove dishonest trustees and recover misappropriated assets.

A TRUST without enforcement is another feeding trough. A chief’s reign ends. A government leaves office. A family head dies. The dispossession survives them.