Poverty aiding land dispossession in communities – LEMU researchers find

Between January 2022 to May 2025, Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU) embarked on a research on preventive legal empowerment across Uganda’s sub-regions of Acholi, Lango, Teso and Karamoja.

The research, conducted by Dr. Theresa Auma as principal investigator, Dr. Doreen Nancy Kobusinge as co-principal investigator and Alex Sebukula, was under the title “Preventive Legal Empowerment: Early Alert and Action to Strengthen Rights in the Context of Land-based Investment in Uganda.”

Primarily, it was done to “proactively identify where investment-driven land conflicts may occur, seek legal support, engage with the potential conflict from a place of agency and legal empowerment.”

In her opening remarks at the launch of the 3-year study on July 31 at Hotel Africana, Kampala, Florence Agwang, Secretary for Uganda National Council for Science and Technology, said evidence-based policy is key to any development.

Dr. Theresa Auma – who doubles as the Executive Director of LEMU, while recognising other LEMU team members who immensely contributed to the research, said there was a large team of researchers. “This has not been the Doctors’ affairs,” she said.

She revealed that during the research, they needed to go through layers and layers of security gates before they could access the investments. “There was nothing we could do. On the question of militarisation and legal empowerment, it (the latter) got defeated even when we engaged the lawyer because proof was required.”

Dr. Theresa said some of the grievances could not be valued in terms of giving it economic value. “So, again, that became a test to legal empowerment and by the time the research ended we had not actually benefited from legal empowerment.”

The preventive approach, the principal investigator said, was also limited. “Militarisation. What are you going to do about the military? Where are you taking your preventive measures? Which gate are you going to pass? So, because of those two contexts our methods of either preventive or legal empowerment were all challenged.”

The remaining investments in Pallisa attracted 214 grievances, she said. “And it’s the one we are talking about – where legal empowerment got defeated because of proof. There was one on forestry in Dokolo. 217 grievances and 97% of them got resolved.”

On her part, Dr. Kobusinge said the project was designed to proactively identify where investment conflicts may occur. “We discovered that community land rights were being violated but also the land itself was being grabbed and all conflicts related to land investment were taking place when these violations were occurring and the question was: how can we prevent conflict around investment?”

The co-principal investigator said where investment is taking place conflict is bound to happen. “So, how do we anticipate this conflict before property is destroyed, before life is lost. So, this is the ethos of this action research.”

“We saw that poverty was aiding land disputes in the communities,” Dr. Kobusinge said of the research, citing Karamoja where community meetings about land rights were held. “The interest shifted from the discussion around land rights to “when are you leaving us to go and line up for food and posho.”

This poverty, the situation of poverty made communities in a position of exploiting their own resources but also very vulnerable for investors to take advantage of them,” she stated. 

Geofrey Weja, the LC3 chairperson of Okwongodul sub-county in Dokolo spoke of the current peaceful co-existence between the community and the Awer forest reserve investor.

Weja attributed the existing peace to LEMU for their intervention. He stated that when the National Forestry Authority (NFA) introduced the investor, things were worse and communities thought the government wanted to grab their land.

“We made a series of meetings by forming the Grievances Redress Committees at the parish level, sub-county level and the district level. We made a lot of achievements and handled over 217 cases within the community. I am happy that about 90% were resolved,” Weja said. “There is now no tension between the community, the investor and NFA.”

What are the main findings?

There are seventeen main findings. According to the research, poverty is aiding land dispossession in communities. “Most of the natural resources and valuable minerals in Uganda are found in the poorest regions of the country, for example, the northern and north-eastern regions.”

While poverty has contributed to communities’ limited ability to control or exploit their land-based resources, the powerful: the rich, multinational corporations, the State are exploiting and dispossessing poor and vulnerable communities of their land and natural resources.

Two, researchers also found that corruption is fuelling community land rights violations in the face of investment. “The monetization of service delivery by most national, local, district and sub-county duty bearers has largely contributed to the deprivation of community land rights during land-based investment.”

Community resistance makes investment projects unproductive. Researchers further discovered that in cases where investors acted with impunity and failed or refused to cooperate with the community, the investments often stalled, were destroyed by community members, or became unproductive.

In Olio sub-county, Serere district, an investor disregarded technical advice from the district natural resources officer as well as community complaints about starting fish farming in a community wetland.

“Instead, the investor sought protection from the political leaders and dug fish ponds in the middle of a community wetland. The community retaliated by occasionally destroying the fish ponds, thereby making the business venture unproductive.”

Recommendations

Researchers have recommended that preventive legal empowerment approaches to resolve or manage land related disputes between communities and investors be prioritized.

Two, they recommend the creation of accessible, affordable and trusted resolution mechanisms, in addition to developing and making use of hotspot mapping and investor compliance monitoring tools.

The above tools “proactively forecast the likelihood of conflict and to identify high-risk areas.”

Another recommendation is leveraging strategic alliances with the government and strengthen local leaders’ accountability.

“Advocacy efforts are most successful when partnering with government allies to enforce laws and confront investors’ illegal practices,” the researchers have recommended.

Meanwhile, the research covered 15 districts with the documentation of 48 land-based investment cases and over 1,000 related grievances.

It benefited 3,673 people. Of this, 2,045 were males and 1,628 females.