Indigeneity and Peacebuilding in Ghana: A Systematic Review

Indigeneity, as used in this article, refers to historically grounded claims of belonging, ancestral connection, moral authority, and locally recognised entitlement within a particular community or territory. In the Ghanaian context, such claims are often tied to land, lineage, chieftaincy, settlement histories, and collective memory, especially where conflicts involve questions about who belongs, who has authority, and whose historical claims should be recognised (Tsikata & Seini, 2004; Ubink, 2008). It is therefore not used merely to describe practices that are old, rural, or non-state. Rather, indigeneity points to the social and political claims through which communities define belonging, authority, memory, legitimacy, and acceptable procedures for conflict resolution (Brock-Utne, 2001; Zartman, 2000). This distinction is important because indigenous, customary, traditional, and local are related but not interchangeable. For instance, 'customary' refers to norms, rules, and procedures recognised through repeated community practice, particularly in areas such as land tenure, inheritance, succession, arbitration, and dispute settlement (Kasanga and Kotey, 2001; Ubink and Quan, 2008). On the other hand, “traditional” refers specifically to inherited institutions and practices associated with recognised authority, including chiefs, elders, queen mothers, kingmakers, lineage heads, and councils of elders (Odotei, 2006; Tonah, 2012). 'Local', however, is broader but contextually refers to actors, institutions, relationships, and practices situated within a community or sub-national, whether customary, religious, civic, youth-based, or state-linked (Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2013; Paffenholz, 2015). Indigenous conflict resolution therefore includes customary and traditional mechanisms, but its analytical focus is wider because it examines how ancestral belonging, cultural legitimacy, moral recognition, and internal power relations shape peacebuilding outcomes in Ghana (Mac Ginty, 2015; Tsikata & Seini, 2004; Ubink, 2008). Conflicts over land, chieftaincy, and communal identity remain among the most persistent sources of local insecurity in Ghana, despite the country’s broader image as a relatively stable democracy. In many parts of the Central, Northern, and Volta Regions, such conflicts are not merely disputes over ownership, succession, or jurisdiction, but also struggles over belonging, ancestry, authority, and historical memory (Odotei, 2006; Tonah, 2012; Tsikata and Seini, 2004; Ubink, 2008). Their persistence points to a fundamental limitation in approaches that treat conflict primarily as a legal or administrative problem. Statutory courts may clarify claims, commissions may establish facts, and security deployments may contain violence, yet these measures often fail to resolve the deeper social and moral foundations of dispute, such as issues of identity and community cohesion that are central to the conflicts in these regions (Aning and Lartey, 2020; Owusu-Mensah, 2017; Ubink & Quan, 2008). As a result, many conflicts in Ghana recur even after formal intervention, suggesting a continuing gap between state authority and locally accepted forms of legitimacy (Kendie and Guri, 2007; National Peace Council, 2018). Within peace, conflict, and development contexts, indigenous conflict resolution is an important field of inquiry in Ghana; indigenous mechanisms commonly include chiefs’ courts, councils of elders, customary arbitration, family-head mediation, oath-taking, ritual reconciliation, and community-based peace processes (Brock-Utne, 2001; Bukari, 2013; Kasanga and Kotey, 2001; Zartman, 2000). These institutions continue to matter because they are embedded in local social relations and derive authority from custom, lineage, and moral recognition rather than from formal coercive power alone (Kirgis, 2011; Mensah, 2015; Obeng and Appiah, 2020). Their significance lies not simply in their “traditional” character, but in their ability to produce outcomes that communities consider socially meaningful and practically enforceable. In disputes where parties must continue to coexist after settlement, indigenous processes often privilege repair, compromise, and coexistence over adversarial victory, thereby offering a different logic of justice from that of formal courts (Issifu and Bukari, 2022; Lederach, 1997). Even so, the literature on indigenous peace practice in Ghana remains unevenly synthesised. Existing studies offer valuable empirical insights into specific conflicts and institutions, yet they frequently fragment across regional cases, disciplinary traditions, and thematic concerns. Some works focus on land administration and legal pluralism, others on chieftaincy crises, and still others on community peacebuilding, but fewer studies systematically draw these strands together into a single analytical conversation (Ghana, Republic of, 2010; Ghana, Republic of, 2011; Osei, 2024; Paalo & Issifu, 2022). This fragmentation creates a gap in the literature: while there is substantial evidence that indigenous mechanisms remain active in Ghanaian conflict resolution, there is less clarity on how these mechanisms should be interpreted collectively, what forms of legitimacy sustain them, and under what conditions they promote sustainable peace. A systematic review is therefore necessary, not only to synthesise existing knowledge, but also to identify patterns, tensions, and conceptual gaps across the available scholarship.