GOVERNMENTS AND CIVIL SOCIETY PARTNERSHIPS
An ILC Africa learning exchange
09-14 June, 2024
The Uganda Learning Week was hosted by the Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Urban Development (MoLHUD) and facilitated by the International Land Coalition in partnership with LandCollaborative; Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF); the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO)/Land-at-scale, National Land Coalition Uganda (NLC Uganda) and Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU).
Summary report
Explore our Summary Report on fostering successful partnerships between governments and civil society organizations in the land governance sector.
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160
Participants
2
Field Visits
The event brought together 160 stakeholders—from policymakers and legal experts to community leaders and advocacy groups from 35 countries. Their shared goal: to explore innovative approaches and forge synergies that enhance the land sector's transparency, equity, and sustainable development.
Throughout the week, participants engaged in interactive plenary sessions, beginning with two field visits to enhance their knowledge of best practices and challenges in land governance.
Butaleja District
The effective implementation of land management, with a focus on customary certificates of ownership (CCOs)
The majority of rural families and communities in Uganda access land through customary land tenure, which applies to 80% of the country’s land. The tools, processes and structures for land registration, including customarily held areas, are not always clear, or community-oriented. Local land institutions are weak despite their important role in land use planning and land administration. Land disputes continue to represent an important percentage of court cases and have particularly negative impacts on women and youth. Continuous encroachments into wetlands are putting such delicate ecosystems under unbearable pressure, accelerating soil degradation.
The visit showed the progress made in strengthening partnerships between communities and local land institutions to improve mapping and registration processes, conflict mediation capacity, and natural resource management, including in wetlands. The visit helped provide first-hand exposure to the use and uptake of progressive land tools by local stakeholders, including local communities, such as Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration & Conflict Mediation or Climate-Resilient Land Use Planning and Community Engagement. Participants also gained insight into how the national land information system worked from a bottom-up perspective.
- Effective coordination: The well-coordinated efforts from the sub-county level and together with UCOBAC, including adequate registry procedures, highlighted the importance of effective coordination and the role of CCOs in resolving land disputes.
- Trust Building: The relationship between the community and government authorities, particularly UCOBAC and GLTN, was built on trust, which was crucial for the project's success and also led to a further strengthening of the relationship between all actors as the project progressed.
- Gender Empowerment: The project had a significant gender-responsive element. Historically, women's ownership of land was taboo in the region, but the project intervention managed to empower the local women, leading to substantial social changes.
- Beneficiary Impact: Three families were visited, the first being a family that benefited from the project by allowing the household’s wife to invest and generate income; the second family included widows who were victims of family land conflicts that had managed to secure land titles through the project; whereas the third visit demonstrated the commitment of the community to land titling, thorough a mediation committee ensuring voluntary participation in land ownership processes.
Dokolo District
Highlighting the impact of large-scale land-based investments on local communities
This visit concerned a forest community whose rights to access and use land for their livelihood were impacted by a large-scale land-based investment in the Awer Central Forest Reserve located in Dokolo district in Northern Uganda. In 1990, the Government of Uganda through its National Forest Authority (NFA) privatised the management of the forest and later issued a licence to a private developer to take up the management of Awer Forest Reserve in 2006.
The activities of the private investor have since exerted pressure on the local population due to illegal encroachment, denying them the right to access and use the land they have historically relied on for farming, grazing, fuel wood, and building materials. On the other hand, the private investor accused the community of deliberately destroying the forest by allowing their animals to graze on the young trees. For a long time, no clear mediation was in place to address the conflict until 2022 when the Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU) launched the GIZ-funded project aimed at promoting Responsible Governance of Investments in Land (RGIL) in the district.
During the community visit, the participants gained insights into how the collaboration with local government land authorities, investors, and the local communities under the scope of this project resulted in reduced community-investor conflict by improving land administration in the context of private investments and further strengthening the integration of international guidelines such as the VGGTs in land governance processes at the local level.
- Strong Cooperation: The collaboration between LEMU, the community, and government representatives was evident. Moreover, the choice of local investors instead of foreign entities was noted to have been beneficial, and a factor that allowed communities to continue practices like beekeeping and other cultivation.
- Challenges of Unbalanced Partnerships: Despite the cooperation, significant challenges remain. Investor influence has led to unbalanced partnerships, resulting in rights violations, land conflicts, and soil degradation. The destruction of community fields by investors and the persistence of land conflicts were notable issues.
- Unequal Benefit Distribution: The unclear distribution of benefits from investments has also caused tension. Investors rarely share profits with the community, leading to strong power imbalances and dissatisfaction among community members.
- Community Resilience: Despite these challenges, the community has shown remarkable resilience. The visit underscored the importance of fostering balanced and equitable partnerships to ensure sustainable development and fair benefit distribution.
The Uganda Learning Week was significant. Participants shared experiences, strategies, and innovative approaches to address land governance issues. Discussions centred on promoting global and regional frameworks for sustainable land management, aligning international agendas with local practices, and identifying champions of inclusive land governance.
It is vital that the Land sector administrators take a proactive and innovative approach to ensuring the optimal use of land, as this will help all of us respond to the land sector's changing needs in the overall context of socio-economic transformation in the 21st century."
"There is a beautiful relationship between a person and their land; it forms the identity of who they are, and that's the relationship we should foster and protect."
