The Dynamics of the Land Question and its Impact on Agricultural Productivity in Mbarara District | Land Portal

Resource information

Date of publication: 
October 1992
Resource Language: 
ISBN / Resource ID: 
ISBN: 978-9970-877-46-0
Pages: 
117

In the developed countries less than 20 per cent of the population is engaged in agriculture. The rest is employed in the industrial sector. In the underdeveloped countries less than 10 per cent of the population is employed in the industrial sector and the rest is engaged in agriculture. At once this dictates that, for some time to come, the route to development in the latter countries will depend on agriculture, which also mainly depends on land policy and tenure. The land question is a contradiction in land rights and consequential social, economic and political abuses replicated on it. In Mbarara District, this constitutes the contradiction between community-observed land rights and legal land rights. Here, several constraints stand in the way of agricultural development; and one such constraint is the nature of land tenure, in which land hoarding, gazetted by both state and individuals continues to flourish, thus fettering production1Although landlords in Uganda were a creation of colonial state, as a result of 1900 Buganda Agreement (Mamdani, 1976), more landlords have been created by the political, economic and social-legal regimes of the post-1900 Buganda Agreement. Notable among them is the 1975 Land Reform Decree, which turned customary owners into tenants at the will of the state (Mamdani, 1984). This resulted in the political and bureaucratic elite acquiring land title claims to these former customary lands. This land is in most cases, hoarded as security against inflation, or for prestige and speculation.

Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

B.M. Kafureka

Publisher(s): 

Data provider

Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) is an independent public policy research and advocacy think tank based in Uganda working in East and Southern Africa. ACODE was first registered in 1999 as a Non-governmental organization (NGO). In 2004, the organization was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee and without having a share capital. ACODE is one of the most dynamic and robust regional leaders in cutting-edge public policy research and analysis in a range of areas including governance, trade, environment, and science and technology.