Country Case Study

Recent developments in public policy towards land in Uganda have focused on two key areas; resolving historical tenure problems by defining and entrenching the land rights of all Ugandans, and increasing the efficiency of use of land for economic growth while addressing environmental concerns. However, integration of land issues into the broader national development strategy has, by and large until very recently, been conducted through two parallel processes and in different fora. Uganda’s Constitutionmaking exercise of the early 1990s marked the first top level attempt to address land issues in the country since the mid 1970s. The Constitution was followed by the Land Act, 1998. Simultaneously, the country has, through the formulation of the national Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP, accepted as Uganda’s PRSP), developed a national strategy for reducing poverty and placed poverty reduction at the centre of the development agenda. The recent formulation of the Land Sector Strategic Plan (LSSP) through a participatory process marks a move towards greater harmonisation of the two processes. Despite this progress, Uganda still lacks a comprehensive statement of national policy on land, linking priority land issues to broader poverty reduction goals.