Conflicting urban land uses at the fringes: issues and experiences of peri-urban farmers in an urbanizing city in Ghana

In late 2010, city authorities in Ghana began to call attention to the looming danger associated with the expansion of Ghanaian cities—the result of both peri-urban land-use changes and livelihood adaptations. In an attempt to debate the rising phenomenon, scholars have tried to approach the issue from the perspective that connects cause and symptoms. In this article, we move beyond the rhetoric of symptoms to examine how peri-urban farmers who are most affected by the expansion of Wa, an emerging city in Ghana to reconfigure livelihood activities. The article is based on Erdas image 2010 and complemented with other research methods. The results show that the city’s expansion has severely altered land use and existing farming practices. Farmers have therefore been forced to re-organize farming strategies to include the application of both organic and inorganic fertilizers, tree cropping, and crop rotation, albeit at a high cost. Concluding, we argue that urban expansion is an index of transformation and naturally peri-urban agrarian communities are the first to undergo major land use and livelihood transformations. The situation in Wa calls for the need to re-define the urban-peri-urban relationships such that the opportunities associated with urban expansion are collectively shared.