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Fossil fuel opponents lobby Africans for support

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2 years ago

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Proponents of a treaty to end fossil fuel drilling are lobbying African countries to support the legislation, which would essentially stop the continent from exploring its newly discovered resources.

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative was first introduced by the Pacific nations of Vanuatu and Tuvalu at the Conference of Parties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in 2022, but even they realise they need global support to make it a reality.

On August 20, the anti-fossil fuel initiative announced that two Malawian cities, Lilongwe and Mzuzu, had become the first in Africa to endorse the treaty. The treaty aims to ensure that a proposed legal mechanism makes it more difficult for new fossil fuel projects to be launched.

It also calls for existing production to be phased out as the world races to keep global temperatures within 1.5°C to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

So far, the proposed Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty has been endorsed by 13 countries, more than 110 cities and sub-national governments, 101 Nobel Laureates, 2,500 civil society organisations, more than 3,000 scientists and academics, and political leaders, including more than 600 parliamentarians from around the world.

But the treaty runs counter to the projects of countries in the region, including Uganda and Tanzania, which are trying to build an oil pipeline to export their crude from the Lake Albert region in Uganda. The two countries have struggled to find financiers after lenders, particularly in the West, backed away from funding the projects for fear of sanctions at home.

Ms Ruth Chingwalu, the deputy mayor of Lilongwe City Council, said her city was taking the opportunity to join others in calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels because of her country’s vulnerability to the current climate crisis. Fossil fuel emissions are now being blamed for a greater proportion of this change.

“To prevent climate catastrophes, urgent action at all levels and international cooperation are essential to ensure a safe and liveable future for us all. In line with this, Lilongwe City Council would like to use this opportunity to foster a fair transition to renewable energy,” Ms Chingwalu said.

In Malawi, climate change is already having a devastating impact on local communities. For example, an estimated 16 million Malawians depend on rain-fed agriculture, meaning a stable climate is crucial for the farming community to thrive. However, since 2019, increasingly erratic rainfall, prolonged droughts and the devastating five cyclones that have hit the country in the last five years alone have left the country’s food systems in a fragile state.

Aside from agriculture, Malawi’s recent history of frequent flooding has devastated the lives of many people, especially those living in cities like Lilongwe, where more than 76 percent of the population lives in vulnerable informal settlements. Residents have lost property and lives, and many have been displaced by flooding.

“As Malawi is the Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) group, the move by its capital city to advocate for a Treaty is critical to ensuring that the needs of the most vulnerable are prioritised in the global transition to a renewable-powered future,” The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative said in a statement.

Kondani Nyasulu, the mayor of Mzuzu City Council, said his city’s endorsement of the treaty was a step in the right direction for his country as Malawi races to achieve its goal of economic and social transformation for its people.

“Mzuzu City Council would like to join others to phase out extraction of coal, oil and gas and thin plastic production through the endorsement of the proposal for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. City councils must pursue a faster, deeper and more ambitious approach to tackling climate change and emission of greenhouse gases that addresses the root cause of these intertwined crises: fossil fuels,” Mr Nyasulu said.

Of Malawi’s 501MW of operational grid capacity, 63MW comes from carbon-emitting diesel plants, according to 2023 local government statistics.

About 86 per cent of the country’s energy comes from wood, which is used for cooking and heating. About 10 per cent of the country’s total energy consumption comes from petroleum products, three per cent from hydropower and one per cent from coal, according to government statistics.

However, the country has no significant oil or natural gas reserves and is therefore heavily dependent on imports to meet its energy needs.

“There is far too much sun shining, wind blowing, and water flowing through our continent for us to continue deepening fossil fuel extraction, which has failed to power our continent or enrich our people.

“Lilongwe and Mzuzu’s call for a Fossil Fuel Treaty is one that should be echoed across Africa for a people-centred just transition to renewable energy, to achieve energy sovereignty and climate justice for our people and our continent,” said Seble Samuel, Head of Africa Campaigns and Advocacy, Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.

Original Source: Monitor

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Govt targets land grabbers with first national public-land register

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19 hours 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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3 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.

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Four youth activists now face public nuisance charges after their arrest during a bold march toward Parliament.

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4 days ago

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August 11, 2026

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By the Witness Radio team.

At Buganda Road court, four youth activists from the Rooted in Resistance Movement were charged with public nuisance after their arrest during a passionate plea to Parliament for an oil-free Uganda.

Activists Ssembalirwa Aniwally, Mugoya Hassan, Aron Patrick Ariong, and Okanya Ivan were detained by parliamentary police as they marched with determination toward Parliament, urging the Ugandan government to abandon oil dependency in favor of an ‘oil-free economy’ built on economic freedom, sustainability, and citizen involvement.

According to the charge sheet seen by Witness Radio, the prosecution alleges that on August 10, 2026, at about 9:00 am, the four activists, along with others still at large, were at King George Way Street in Kampala Central. They wore orange T-shirts bearing the words “Rooted in Resistance” and carried placards with messages including “Prioritize Other Sectors of the Economy,” “Oil Is Temporary, Nature Is Permanent,” and “Oil Today, Problems Tomorrow.”

Prosecutors claim the activists stood on the road, disrupting traffic and creating hazards.

The activists appeared before Grade One Magistrate Her Worship Rophine Achayo at Buganda Road court yesterday, where they were charged with being a nuisance on the public road, contrary to Section 67(1) of the Road Act, Cap. 346.

Section 160(1) of the Penal Code Act, which defines a common nuisance, provides that any person who does an act not authorized by law or fails to discharge a legal duty and thereby causes “any common injury, or danger or annoyance,” or obstructs or causes inconvenience to the public in the exercise of common rights, commits the misdemeanor of common nuisance and is liable to imprisonment for one year.

The four pleaded not guilty and now await their fate in Luzira Prison, remanded until August 28, 2026.

The group’s mission was to urge Parliament to rethink Uganda’s reliance on petroleum, warning that true prosperity cannot be built on a resource that will one day run out.

The activists contend that despite years of promises—jobs, industry, infrastructure, and poverty relief—oil’s benefits have reached only a privileged few, while many others remain trapped in poverty.

“Our demand for an oil-free economy is not a rejection of development, but a demand for a different development model, one that places Ugandan citizens, productive sectors and sustainable wealth creation at the center of national planning,” the group said.

They call for bold investment in other sectors, insisting Uganda should chart a path toward sustainable wealth, citizen empowerment, and true economic independence instead of clinging to petroleum.

These arrests are part of a troubling pattern as more Ugandans face criminal charges for protesting oil projects or demanding accountability for their social and environmental costs.

12 environmental activists were arrested in Kampala in August 2025 during a protest against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). Eight out of the 12 activists were later convicted and sent to prison to serve an eleven (11) month sentence. They were released from Luzira Prison on April 21, 2026, as time spent on remand had effectively covered their 11-month sentences.

The other four, including Ivan Wamboga, Baker Tamale and Habibu Nalungu, pleaded guilty and were released on November 19, 2025, after being ordered to perform community service. Mark Makoba also pleaded guilty and was released on November 6, 2025, without any additional penalty.

These cases reveal the risks faced by those who challenge Uganda’s oil agenda. Even after release, the activists’ ordeals have intensified fears for freedom of expression and assembly across civil society.

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