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AG okays disclosure of oil agreements amidst international pressure

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2 years ago

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The oil companies expressed no objection to disclosing the agreements.

The Attorney General, Kiryowa Kiwanuka, has given the Ugandan government a green light to disclose the international oil contracts to the public.

This comes after the oil companies said they have no objections to publicising the oil contracts. Kiwanuka’s advice is likely to be welcomed by civil society and Ugandan citizens who have long called for transparency in the oil and mining sectors. Kiwanuka, in a letter dated July 2, 2024, advised the minister of Finance, Matia Kasaija that he was at liberty to disclose the production sharing agreements (PSAs) if he deemed it appropriate.

In a letter dated July 2, 2024, Kiwanuka advised Finance minister Matia Kasaija that he may disclose the production sharing agreements (PSAs) if he deems it appropriate. This guidance was in response to a letter from Kasaija dated June 1, 2024. However, Kiwanuka’s advice specifically pertains only to contracts with TotalEnergies Uganda and CNOOC Uganda Limited. He cited letters from these companies, dated July 18, 2021, and November 29, 2021, respectively, which confirmed their consent to the disclosure of their PSAs to fulfil the requirements of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) standard 2.4.

“Therefore, we advise that should you deem it appropriate you are at liberty to disclose the PSAs as prescribed by the EITI standard requirement,” reads the letter copied to the minister of Energy and Mineral Development, state minister for Minerals, deputy attorney general.

The letter was also copied to the permanent secretary/secretary to the treasury, ministry of Finance, permanent secretary ministry of Energy, solicitor general and deputy solicitor general. A member of the civil society who had seen the letter however said it was silent concerning the contracts signed with other companies involved in oil exploration in the Albertine area.

Some of those include DGR Energy Turaco Uganda SMC Limited which is a unit of Australia’s DGR Global and state-owned Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) and Nigeria’s Oranto. From Kiwanuka’s advice, it appears that the contracts signed with UNOC and mining contracts will remain a secret.

Uganda has been a member of the EITI since August 2020, committing to contract transparency by publicly disclosing the full text of agreements governing the exploitation of oil, gas, and mineral resources. By joining the EITI, Uganda aimed to enhance transparency, strengthen tax collection, promote public debate, improve the investment climate, and create lasting value from its petroleum and mineral resources.

This week, EITI executive director Mark Robinson visited Uganda to assess the country’s progress in ensuring transparency in the oil, gas, and minerals sectors. Robinson was accompanied by Suneeta Kaimal, president and CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), which has been instrumental in building the capacity of Ugandan civil society, media, parliamentarians, and government ministries on natural resource governance.

EITI executive director Nark Robinson
EITI executive director Nark Robinson

NRGI has supported capacity building of Ugandan civil society, media, parliamentarians, and ministries on natural resources governance, especially in accountability and governance. Robinson and Kaimal on Thursday met the minister of Finance, Matia Kasaijja, and his officers and discussed the progress in ensuring public disclosure of contracts under the extractive sector.

He also met officers from the Attorney General’s office and the key industry players like TotalEnergies and members of the civil society under multi-stakeholder groups (MSGs) hosted at the Uganda EITI secretariat under the ministry of Finance.  Robinson told journalists that his team found it so striking that all the stakeholders in Uganda were committed to the EITI process.

”The EITI seemed to have curved out open space in Uganda for genuine, free, and open debate on these complex issues around the extractive industry,” he said.

RObison’s visit to Uganda follows the validation report on Uganda whose results were released in May 2024. The EITI board said Uganda had achieved a moderate score in implementing the 2019 EITI Standard at 78.5 points. The overall score reflects an average of the three component scores on stakeholder engagement, transparency, and outcomes and impact. On the transparency component, Uganda achieved a fairly low score of 67.5 points. Robinson while meeting the minister raised some of these issues.

“We identified some of the improvements that could be made. He was very receptive. For example, how can contracts further be made open to the public? So there is a process to move towards that goal,” he said.

He confirmed that they discussed making public the audited accounts of Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC).

“He was very receptive to that idea. So I was very struck by their receptivity and recognition from the government to respond positively to some of the recommendations,” added Robinson.

Sources who attended the meeting with the minister said he asked his visitors about what Uganda would gain from its participation with EITI. Robinson said the minister’s question was good because it reconfirmed why Uganda signed up to the EITI. The EITI board had reported that there had been little progress on full disclosures of contracts in the oil sector despite Uganda EITI’s (UGEITI) efforts.

The EITI board also noted that beneficial ownership data was not available though there had been reforms put to create a national beneficial ownership registry. Robinson seemed to have had information to the effect that TotalEnergies and CNOOC Uganda had written no objection letters to the disclosure of the PSAs signed with the government of Uganda.

“Uganda has to demonstrate real progress on making the contracts public. That needs to happen not just those two but across the sector,” he said.

Robinson emphasized the need for Uganda to demonstrate real progress in making contracts public across the entire sector, not just with TotalEnergies and CNOOC. He also called for the creation of a public registry of beneficial owners in the oil, gas, and mining sectors and the reconciliation of discrepancies in gold production data.

“The fourth one is to reconcile some of the discrepancies in the mining data, especially gold production,” added Robison.

Asked why they were insistent on gold data, he said, “It is so important in many countries. And it is one of your major minerals in Uganda that has significant and considerable revenue. That is why gold matters so much than other sectors of the mining,” he said.

Gold, one of Uganda’s major minerals, has been a focal point due to its significant revenue potential. A recent UN report highlighted Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi as key transit routes for gold smuggled from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to Dubai. In Uganda, discrepancies have been noted between gold production figures reported by the Bank of Uganda and those declared by Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) customs.

David Sserwadda, a senior mining inspector, and a member of the Uganda EITI Multisector Group said there is an effort to ensure that different agencies of the government don’t regulate gold exports. He revealed that there had been a meeting with the customs department on how to align gold export in the sense that when it is not cleared, the customs should not allow the export. Uganda has to close some of those before the next EITI board validation commencing on July 1, 2026.

Source: The Observer

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Minister Nabakooba wants special land title issuance halted

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5 hours ago

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August 17, 2026

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She said the continued issuance of the certificates without adequate verification was fuelling land disputes and creating opportunities for land grabbers to deprive legitimate owners of their property.

Lands minister Judith Nabakooba wants the issuance of certificates of occupancy, which act as land titles, halted for three months to allow the Government to review and streamline the process and curb double titling.

She said the continued issuance of the certificates without adequate verification was fuelling land disputes and creating opportunities for land grabbers to deprive legitimate owners of their property.

She made the remarks on August 14, 2026, during a lands staff meeting at the Office of the Prime Minister in Kampala.

The minister warned lands officers against issuing special certificates for land that already has registered ownership, saying those who disregard the procedures could face arrest.

“You have slept on your duty on the issue of special certificates. When you continue issuing them, I will send the police, and they will arrest you.”

Nabakooba cited cases in Kyengera and Kabula, in Wakiso and Lyantonde districts respectively, where the titles had reportedly been issued despite existing claims and titles on the same land.

“We need to sit and have a clear guideline on how to handle that issue,” she said, adding that many of the reported cases were coming from the Buganda region.

She said the creation of special titles on already registered land was also placing pressure on ministry leadership, as affected people frequently seek intervention.

“I receive distress calls from my bosses. You are putting special titles on existing titles, which makes my work very hard,” she said.

The minister’s concerns come amid persistent complaints about land grabbing, overlapping titles and double titling, which she said undermine public confidence in the country’s land administration system.

Nabakooba urged lands officials to take responsibility for the services they provide and follow proper procedures when handling land transactions.

She also directed lands officers to clear the backlog of land transactions by December, questioning how officials who frequently absent themselves from duty would meet the deadline.

She said the ministry continues to receive complaints about officers who report to work only once a week.

“You disappear a lot. Every time you give excuses. There are people who work for only one day a week. We get a lot of complaints from the public,” she said.

The minister also criticised poor customer care, saying some officers shout at clients and create an intimidating environment that discourages people from freely presenting their land-related concerns.

She further directed officials to remove brokers operating around Ministry Zonal Offices, accusing them of misleading clients and sometimes posing as ministry officials to solicit money.

“Let’s try to get brokers out of our offices. They even start blackmailing our names, posing as officials from the ministry and taking money from people,” she said.

Nabakooba also directed staff to wear name tags and ministry shirts to help members of the public distinguish genuine ministry employees from brokers.

The technical officers were also directed to enter titles completed under the Systematic Land Adjudication and Certification programme into the land information system and ensure they are distributed to the intended beneficiaries.

The minister appealed to officials to engage contractors to provide outstanding data needed to complete the programme.

“This is a World Bank loan, and we have to pay back the money, so let’s use it properly to finish the services they were asked for,” she said.

Nabakooba also urged technical officers to accompany ministers during field visits, saying their expertise is necessary to provide technical guidance and help the Government understand challenges faced by communities.

What others said

Acting permanent secretary in the lands ministry Dr Emmanuel Mugunga urged staff to embrace teamwork, accountability and respectful treatment of colleagues and clients.

He warned that the Human Capital Management System would track staff attendance and that absenteeism would have consequences.

Housing state minister Persis Namuganza urged staff to restore public confidence in the ministry, saying some members of the public now associate lands officials with land grabbing.

Lands state minister Harriet Ntabaazi called for greater collaboration among officers and warned technical staff against treating themselves as “small gods” at their duty stations.

Ntabaazi said land grabbing, overlapping titles, double titling and family conflicts remain among the major challenges facing the lands sector.

She also cautioned officers against soliciting money from clients, saying such practices damage the ministry’s reputation.

The ministers called for stronger accountability, adherence to proper procedures and improved teamwork to restore public confidence in land administration.

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Govt targets land grabbers with first national public-land register

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3 days ago

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August 14, 2026

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Officials say a nationwide inventory will finally let the state prove what it owns — from school compounds to road reserves — but the exercise is beginning on a shoestring.

Mukono, Uganda — Uganda has begun building its first comprehensive national register of government land, an undertaking officials say is aimed squarely at land grabbers who for years have carved up public property the state often cannot prove it owns.

The five-year exercise, the Comprehensive Government Land Inventory, will document every identifiable state plot — schools, hospitals, police stations, road reserves, wetlands and forests among them — and record who owns each, how it is used and whether it is under threat.

“If we don’t do that, then we may never have land to protect,” Lands Minister Judith Nabakooba told a regional workshop at Rider Hotel in Mukono, east of the capital Kampala, on Thursday.

The vulnerability is considerable. Government land makes up about 23 percent of Uganda’s territory, but only roughly a quarter of it has been formally titled, according to the Uganda Land Commission — leaving the majority undocumented and, officials concede, easy to grab.

Nabakooba said Uganda’s rapid transformation was making the problem worse. Towns are spreading, infrastructure and industry are expanding, and land that was rural only a few years ago is now valuable real estate. She warned that population growth — which she said could push Uganda towards 70 million people by 2050 — would only sharpen the competition for a fixed supply of land.

The minister urged local authorities to enforce physical development plans and to build upwards rather than outwards. “Can we now begin thinking of going vertical when you are building offices and spaces for accommodation… then the rest of the land is used for agricultural purposes?” she asked. She singled out Wakiso district, on Kampala’s fringes, where development pressure is most intense, and cautioned officials against surrendering government plots simply because they appeared vacant.

Local knowledge, national record

The Mukono meeting, billed as the “Buganda 1” engagement and the second after the programme’s national launch in July, gathered district chairpersons, resident district commissioners, land board members and civil society from central-region districts including Wakiso, Mukono, Buikwe, Kayunga, Luweero, Nakasongola and Buvuma.

Uganda Land Commission chairperson Prof Pen Mogi Nyeko told them their local knowledge was central to the exercise. “You all virtually know what land belongs to government,” he said, appealing to them to help identify and title state plots — and warning land boards not to hand public land to individuals.

He said the state was the country’s biggest developer, and that consolidated, protected land could anchor major projects. Nyeko pointed to the Amuru sugar scheme in northern Uganda, where the government compensated landowners across some 10,000 hectares for a plantation and factory, as an example of what public land could enable, describing the local opposition it once faced as “negative politics”. The project in fact has a long and contested history, resisted for years by Acholi communities and their leaders and fought through the courts over customary ownership before compensation was settled.

Nyeko also raised the grabbing of institutional land, including plots belonging to church-founded schools. “Many of you were students in these lands, in these schools. So it is you to help us get those lands protected,” he said. He stressed the commission was not after private property: “The constitution is very clear: land belongs to the people. For us, we are only interested in land which belongs to government.” A reliable inventory, he added, would let the state direct investors to suitable sites — “if we know that there is 2, 3 square miles of land belonging to government in Nakasongola… we recommend that area for industrialisation.”

A reform on a tight budget

For all its ambition, the programme is starting with little money. The commission has said it was costed at about 100 billion shillings (roughly $27m), but only 6 billion shillings was released this financial year, even after a parliamentary committee recommended more. Implementation will be phased, beginning with cities and municipalities where land values — and the incentive to grab — are highest.

Emmanuel Kaganzi, representing the ministry’s permanent secretary, said the register had to capture more than ownership. It should show whether each parcel was surveyed, titled and free of encroachment or competing claims, he said, giving government the chance “to intervene early” rather than react to disputes after the fact.

But a register was only as good as its upkeep, he cautioned. “A government land inventory completed today but not updated tomorrow will gradually lose its usefulness.” He said responsibility for keeping records current would fall across the commission, the ministry, local governments and the agencies that occupy state land, and pressed repeatedly for coordination between them. The inventory, he added, should build on systems already in place — the Uganda Land Information System, the National Land Information Centre and the ministry’s zonal offices, which have moved land services closer to citizens — rather than create new silos.

Kaganzi was blunt about the human element. “An accurate system will achieve little if public officers knowingly allow government land to be encroached, to be taken, to be grabbed, and irregularly allocated,” he said, adding that officials entrusted with public land must treat it as belonging to the people of Uganda.

Cross-checking a fragmented record

The commission’s secretary, Andrew Nyumba, said the state’s own records were part of the problem, scattered across the commission, ministries, local governments and district land boards and never fully reconciled. The existing records, he said, did not amount to a comprehensive picture of government land.

For each holding, he said, the inventory should answer a set of basic questions — what the parcel is, where it lies, its size and boundaries, the evidence of state ownership, which institution is responsible, how it is used, whether it is documented and whether it is occupied, encroached upon or disputed. The commission would draw on registry and cadastral data, ministry and local-government records, survey and planning information, asset registers, historical archives, community knowledge and, where needed, physical checks on the ground.

Those sources would be cross-checked against one another, and disagreements, Nyumba argued, were useful rather than a setback. “A discrepancy in information is not necessarily a failure of the exercise. It is also information,” he said, describing conflicting records as a signal of where further verification was required. The goal, he said, was to move “from fragmented information toward a more reliable, integrated and continuously maintained picture of government land in Uganda”.

The drive follows years of criticism over the commission’s record-keeping. The Auditor General has previously flagged the absence of a comprehensive government land database, and the body has been drawn into numerous court cases over contested public plots — the very gaps the inventory is meant to close.

Source: www.ugstandard.com/

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Experts rally the region to unite behind East Africa’s transformative Agroecology Bill.

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5 days ago

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August 12, 2026

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By the Witness Radio team.

Across East Africa, experts and agricultural advocates are urging a united front for the proposed East African Community (EAC) Agroecology Bill, believing its passage could revolutionize food systems, empower food sovereignty, and uplift millions of farmers’ lives.

In mid-April 2026, the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) officially began the legislative process for the EAC Agroecology Bill, 2026, after the Agriculture, Tourism and Natural Resources Committee chairperson, Hon. Gideon Gaptan Thoar, received parliamentary leave to draft and introduce it. The drafting committee is now in the final stages of tabling the bill before parliament.

This rallying cry echoed through an online webinar hosted by the Center for Food and Adequate Living Rights and broadcast live on Witness Radio. The event gathered agricultural experts, food sovereignty champions, and regional legislators to explore the bill’s promise and the hurdles it may face.

If passed, it would lay the foundation for a unified regional legal framework championing agroecological farming throughout the East African Community. Supporters believe this could be a powerful tool to combat food insecurity, protect farmers’ rights and indigenous seeds, address climate change and biodiversity loss, and tackle challenges faced by smallholder farmers.

Mr. Andrew Adem, Program Coordinator for Food Systems at the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), said the region must learn from the shortcomings of the Green Revolution model, which prioritized increased yields and external agricultural inputs.

He pointed out that although the model aimed to boost yields and farmers’ incomes, it left them vulnerable when harvests fell short.

Adem noted that in tough seasons, farmers often bear the high costs of expensive inputs, while intensive farming erodes agricultural diversity and time-honored knowledge.

To address these challenges, he said, agroecology flips the script by putting farmers and their wisdom at the heart of agricultural progress.

“In Africa, food is more important than yields because it carries a lot of things. Therefore, the Green Revolution failed, and hence the Agroecology Bill presents an opportunity for us to stand up and protect the sovereignty of food in Africa,” Adem said during the Webinar meeting.

He explained that agroecology inspires farmers to break free from expensive external inputs, nurture healthier soils, diversify their crops, and tap into the wealth of local knowledge and resources.

Unlike systems fixated on monocultures and quotas, advocates say agroecology embraces nutrition, culture, biodiversity, and the enduring wellbeing of farming communities.

This legislative push arrives as hunger casts a long shadow over Africa. Jean Leonard from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) highlighted that the continent bears the World’s largest hungry population, with around 309 million people affected.

He described agroecology as a holistic approach, weaving together ecological and social principles to shape and guide agricultural systems.

“Agroecology seeks to optimize interaction between people, markets, agriculture and ecosystems while addressing environmental, social and economic systems simultaneously rather than focusing on single technologies,” Leonard said.

Leonard outlined key ingredients for the success of the Bill: dedicated lawmakers, appropriate budgets, robust funding, supportive laws, and genuine involvement from farmers. She urged greater investment in youth, believing that empowering young people with resources and opportunities could open fresh paths into agriculture and speed the shift to agroecological farming.

Hon. Jackline Amongin, a Ugandan member of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), said the proposed legislation is intended to create a common framework for agroecological farming across the EAC.

She emphasized that the East African Community’s unique character calls for unity, not fragmented efforts, in transforming agriculture.

“We shall have the best, but all efforts must be put on enacting the Bill into law. Once the law is put in place, all the desired issues of implementation and execution will be agreed on. Other factors will follow,” she added.

Advocates stress that agroecology is more than a farming method. They see it as a philosophy that links agriculture to environmental care, social justice, cultural heritage, nutrition, and economic vitality.

This approach inspires farmers to exchange wisdom, broaden their crops, and craft solutions tailored to their unique landscapes.

According to the Bill memorandum, the purpose of the EAC Agroecology Bill, 2026, is to mainstream agroecological farming by promoting agroecology principles across agri-food systems. It seeks to integrate ecological, social and participatory approaches while combining scientific and traditional knowledge to enhance biodiversity, ecosystem services, resilience, livelihoods and food sovereignty.

“The Bill will therefore be tabled and gazetted before being subjected to public consultations, hearings and participation by members of the public. It will then proceed to a second reading before being referred to the whole House Committee for detailed consideration. Once all these processes are duly followed, the Bill will be presented for a third reading and passage by EALA. It will then go through the EAC process before ultimately becoming an Act.” She concluded.

Related posts:

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