MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK

The African Development Bank and the Tree Plantations Industry

Published

3 years ago

November 16, 2020

“Plantations are not forests”, members of communities from Zambezia province, in Mozambique.

In June 2019, the report “Towards Large-Scale Commercial Investment in African Forestry,”
(1) made a call to development-funding agencies, mainly from Europe, and the World Bank,
to provide aid money to a new Fund for financing 100,000 hectares of (new) industrial tree
plantations, to support the potential development of 500,000 hectares, in Eastern and
Southern Africa. This money, according to the report, would be crucial for private investors to
generate profits from the plantations. The new Fund would be headquartered in the tax
haven of Mauritius.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) and WWF Kenya produced this report with funding
from the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds. The purpose of the report is to assist the
AfDB “in evaluating and designing alternative private funding models for commercial forestry
in Africa with a view to ultimately establishing, or aiding the establishment of, a specialized
investment vehicle for commercial forestry plantations.” The report declares that the
development agencies from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the United
Kingdom and The Netherlands are interested.
Essentially, the report is a praise to industrial monoculture plantations. It repeats, without
providing any evidence, most of the deceiving arguments that plantations companies use in
their propagandas to cover up the impacts of this devastating industry. The report’s focus is
on outlining the possible financial instruments that would attract companies to this region and
make their investments most profitable.
The report identifies “readily available projects with the potential to establish almost 500,000
ha of new forest (sic) on about 1 million ha of landscape, not including areas that existing
companies and developers are already planning to use for own expansion. It also excludes
early stage or speculative projects.” (italics added) In particular, the report identifies “viable
plantation land” in ten countries: Angola, Republic of Congo, Ghana, Mozambique, Malawi,
South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The report further affirms that “Africa may be positioned to have the most profitable
afforestation potential worldwide.” And, then, it goes into explaining the possible investment
schemes that can make profit-oriented business and afforestation objectives (from climate or
voluntary targets) to be aligned and, thus, generate more profits for shareholders.
None of the pages in the report mention, however, not even indirectly, the overwhelming
amount of information that evidences the many negative impacts that industrial plantations
cause to communities and their environments. The report’s authors chose to ignore
plantations companies’ destruction of forests and savannahs; erosion of soils; contamination
and dry-up of water sources; overall violence inflicted on communities which include
restriction of movement, criminalization when resistance emerges, abuse, harassment and
sexual violence in particular to women and girls; destruction of livelihoods and food
sovereignty; destruction of cultural, spiritual and social fabrics within and among
neighbouring communities; few precarious and hazardous jobs; unfulfilled “social” projects or
promises made to communities; destruction of ways of living; rise in HIV/AIDS; and the list
goes on.

In front of this, on September 21, 2020, the International Day of Struggle against
Monoculture Plantations, 121 organisations from 47 countries and 730 members from
different rural communities in Mozambique that are facing industrial tree plantations,
disseminated an open letter to demand the immediate abandonment of any and every
afforestation programme based on large-scale monoculture plantations. (2)
The report, nonetheless, brags about having used a “sector-wide consultation exercise.”
For the authors, the sector includes “industry participants ranging from investors, industrial
players, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) through to forestry fund managers
(…) To further enrich and triangulate inputs to the study, the team also participated in three
forestry industry events and consulted with a broad range of personal contacts in the sector.”
The report also mentions consultations made to Development Finance Institutions and
agencies as well as oil and other industrial companies. It is clear however how communities
living in or around the almost 500,000 hectares of land identified to be transformed into
industrial monocultures, are not considered part of the sector. Nor were considered the many
communities and groups that have been resisting for decades the plantations in the countries
the report use as examples: Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana and Brazil. (3)
The report further sustains that the NGO Conservation International confirmed “that it sees
potential in associating large global businesses with the forestry sector.” It further mentions
WWF and The Nature Conservancy – namely, the same category of NGOs mainly concerned
on promoting programs and policies that are aligned with corporate interests as an easy way
to keep their funding, projects and investments.
The purely financial focus of this report, with an eye on how to make most profits, should not
come as a surprise though. It was prepared by a company called Acacia Sustainable
Business Advisors (4), which was set up by Martin Poulsen, a development banker active in
rising private Equity Funds particularly in Africa. Equity Funds try to offer big returns by
spreading investments across companies from different sectors. (5) One co-author of the
report was Mads Asprem, the ex-director of Green Resources, a Norwegian industrial tree
plantation and carbon offsets company. Green Resources’ tree plantations in Mozambique,
Tanzania, and Uganda have resulted in land grabs, evictions, loss of livelihoods and
increased hunger for local communities. (6)

The report also shows the possible responses that investors could have to potential
“barriers”. One “structural barrier” identified is called “stakeholder relations,” a very vague
concept that seems to be related to possible conflicts with communities living in or around
the plantation projects. The term “conflicts” however is not mentioned once in the whole
report. The recommended response to this “barrier” is to “Use AfDB or other MDB
[Multilateral Development Bank] “honest broker” profile to convene stakeholders.” So it
seems that the strategy is to use development banks to make communities believe that the
project has the intention of improving (developing) people’s lives. Another “structural barrier”
identified in the report is “land tenure challenges,” to which the recommended response is to
“Follow FSC and other best practices.” This, of course, is recommended despite the vast
amount of information that shows how, in practice, FSC certifies as “sustainable” industrial
tree plantations that destroy peoples’ livelihoods.
When the climate and development agendas blend for profit
It is relevant to underline how the report makes use of the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDG) and the need for climate change mitigation and adaptation in the African region to
promote the further expansion of industrial plantations. It goes as far as to conclude that
“Channelling financial resources to such efforts [afforestation in the framework of the SDGs]
is within the mandate of international development organizations and special climate funds.”
The report also states that “preliminary interviews yielded information that some oil
companies are already forming alliances with sustainable forestry investment companies.”
This despite the fact that oil and gas companies are a fundamental driver of climate change,
which would undermine any possible positive outcome for the climate. Besides, these
‘alliances’ also give these companies an easy way out of any responsibility for their business
operations. This is clearly exemplified with the announcement of oil giant companies, such as
Italian ENI and Anglo-Dutch Shell, to invest in mega tree plantation projects to supposedly
“compensate” their mega levels of pollution they provoke. These two companies are
responsible for environmental disasters and crimes as a result of their fossil fuel activities in
many places across the globe. (7)
The African Development Bank is complicit in this strategy. While the Bank finances this
report encouraging the expansion of industrial plantations in Africa as a climate solution, it
finances in Mozambique a new gas extraction mega-project in the Cabo Delgado province,
undertaken by a consortium of companies including ENI.
This report is one more proof of how investments from profit-seeking corporations are put in
front of the social well being of people in the name of development and now also of
addressing climate change. There is no “unused” or “degraded” land available at the scale
proposed, which means countless people in Africa will be directly and indirectly affected if
this expansion plan materialise.
Another relevant omission of the report is how it bluntly assumes that the current scarcity of
investment in large-scale tree plantations in this African region is due to the few investment
opportunities available. However, the communities and groups on the ground organizing
almost on a daily basis to oppose the seizing of their lands and lives by these plantations
companies, have clear that their resistance has been successful to halt the expansion of
these plantations in many places. And as the open letter launched on September 21st said,

communities around the world “will certainly resist this new and insane expansion plan
proposed in the AfDB and WWF-Kenya.”

(1) AfDB, CIF, WWF, Acacia Sustainable, Towards large-scale investment in African forestry, 2019,
http://redd-monitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/towards_largescale_
commercial_investment_in_african_forestry.pdf
(2) Open Letter about investments in monoculture tree plantations in the Global South, especially in
Africa, and in solidarity with communities resisting the occupation of their territories, 2020,
https://wrm.org.uy/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/carta-con-firmas-en-inglés_upd201008.pdf
(3) See more information on resistance struggles against plantations here: https://wrm.org.uy/browseby-
subject/international-movement-building/local-struggles-against-plantations/
(4) Acacia Sustainable Business Advisors, https://www.acaciasba.com/about
(5) Groww, Equity Mutual Funds, https://groww.in/p/equity-funds/
(6) REDD-Monitor, How WWF and the African Development Bank are promoting lang grabs in Africa,
2020, https://redd-monitor.org/2020/09/22/international-day-of-struggle-against-monoculture-treeplantations-
how-wwf-and-the-african-development-bank-are-promoting-land-grabs-in-africa/ ; The
Expansion of Tree Plantations on Peasant Territories in the Nacala Territories: Green Resources in
Mozambique, 2018, https://wrm.org.uy/articles-from-the-wrm-bulletin/recommended/the-expansion-oftree-
plantations-on-peasant-territories-in-the-nacala-corridor-green-resources-in-mozambique/ ; WRM
bulletin, Green Resources Mozambique: More False Promises! 2018, https://wrm.org.uy/articles-fromthe-
wrm-bulletin/section1/green-resources-mozambique-more-false-promises/ ; WRM bulletin, Carbon
Colonialism: Failure of Green Resources’ Carbon Offset Project in Uganda, 2018,
https://wrm.org.uy/articles-from-the-wrm-bulletin/section1/carbon-colonialism-failure-of-greenresources-
carbon-offset-project-in-uganda/ ; WRM bulletin, Tanzania: Community resistance against
monoculture tree plantations, 2018,
https://wrm.org.uy/articles-from-the-wrm-bulletin/section1/tanzania-community-resistance-againstmonoculture-
tree-plantations/ ; and WRM bulletin, The farce of “Smart forestry”: The cases of Green
Resources in Mozambique and Suzano in Brazil, 2015, https://wrm.org.uy/articles-from-the-wrmbulletin/
section1/the-farce-of-smart-forestry-the-cases-of-green-resources-in-mozambique-andsuzano-
in-brazil/
(7) REDD-Monitor, NGOs oppose the oil industry’s Natural Climate Solutions and demand that ENI
and Shell keep fossil fuels in the ground, 2019, https://wrm.org.uy/other-relevant-information/ngosoppose-
the-oil-industrys-natural-climate-solutions-and-demand-that-eni-and-shell-keep-fossil-fuels-in the-
ground /
WRM Bulletin

MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK

Ugandan Activists Face Criminal Charges Following Pipeline Protest

Published

1 week ago

April 17, 2024

witnessradio.org

More than 30 environmental and human rights defenders, many of them students protesting the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, have been arrested in Kampala and other parts of Uganda since 2021. Photo courtesy of Phototheque AT.

Human rights watchdogs sound alarm on crackdown on environmental advocates in the East African nation.

IN UGANDA, the climate crisis poses a real and present threat to citizens. So too does the act of protesting against climate-polluting projects, due to the state’s brutal crackdown on climate activists.

That threat is being felt by 11 young climate activists, all of the them Kyambogo University students, who have been embroiled in Uganda’s criminal-legal system since late last year. The students were arrested while protesting against the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), a 1,443-kilometer pipeline that will transport crude oil produced in Uganda’s Lake Albert oilfields to Tanzania’s port of Tanga for export.

The most recent crackdown came on Dec. 15, when four activists, members of Justice Movement Uganda, were arrested — and, they say, beaten — by security forces during a peaceful march to deliver a petition to the country’s parliament. The petition asked parliament to halt the pipeline project and free seven of their colleagues who were arrested in November and locked up in the country’s Luzira Maximum Security Prison.

“My friends and I, numbering over 50 students, marched from our hostels of residence to parliament, but only a few us managed to reach the gate of the parliament because we were attacked by police from the start,” Bwete Abdul Aziiz, one of the four students arrested on Dec. 15, told Earth Island Journal. The 26-year-old Kampala resident was separated from the main body of protesters along with a few other marchers. Although this separation helped the smaller group reach the grounds of the parliament, it led to their alleged assault and arrest by Ugandan security forces.

“They kicked us all over our body and slapped us repeatedly,” Abdul Aziiz said of the assault. The security forces then drove the activists to the Central Police Station, where they were detained for four days. On Dec. 19, the same day the first group of seven protesters gained their freedom, Abdul Aziiz and three others, Lubega Jacob, Lutabi Nicolas, and Kalyango Shafik, appeared in court on the charge of causing public nuisance, which carries a maximum sentence of one year imprisonment. From there, they were remanded to Luzira, where they spent the holidays. It was not until Jan. 10 that they able to obtain a bail. They appeared in court on March 11, and are due back on April 17 for further hearing.

Since their release on bail, the activists say they have been receiving anonymous calls often accompanied by threats of physical harm unless they stopped campaigning against TotalEnergies. The French energy company, together with the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Tanzania State oil companies, is currently building the pipeline.

“Ever since we got bailed out, life has not been the same, due to continuous threats from unknown people, and we have been shifting our places of residence over and over due to fear for our safety,” says Abdul Aziiz. He has since lost his job, which he relied on to support himself, his two siblings, and his mother, and to pay his tuition at Kyambogo University where he is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Arts and education.

THEIR ORDEAL, analysts say, demonstrates the incredible odds faced by Ugandan climate justice activists trying to stop a massive fossil fuel project in a continent that is on the frontlines of the climate catastrophe. “What has been happening is that the judicial system is harsh for those against the project, like any other advocates who asks question about governance issues in the country,” a Ugandan oil and gas expert, who wishes to stay anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, told the Journal.

Under the leadership of President Yoweri Museveni, a staunch backer of EACOP, climate activists in Uganda regularly report being threatened, harassed, and prosecuted. At least 30 environmental and human rights defenders, many of them students, have been arrested in Kampala and other parts of Uganda since 2021, according to a November report by Human Rights Watch, which was published before the November or December arrests.

“The illegal arrests and fake trials of activists who are protesting against EACOP is part of the government and oil companies’ strategy to instill maximum fear among Ugandans so that no one questions the excesses happening in the EACOP plans,” Dickens Kamugisha, CEO of public policy research and advocacy group AFIEGO-Africa Institute for Energy Governance, told the Journal. “In effect, the arrests and trials have no legal basis but just evil objectives to continue shrinking the civic space.”

Once described as a mid-sized carbon bomb by the Climate Accountability Project’s Richard Heede, the EACOP, which will cost an $5 billion to construct, comes with six pumping stations to maintain the oil flow and pressure in the pipeline (two in Uganda and four in Tanzania). It will terminate at Tanzania’s coastal city, Tanga, with a terminal and jetty from which crude oil will be loaded onto tankers. It is expected to be operational by 2025, and if completed, would be responsible for 34 million tons of carbon emissions per year for some 25 years.

Human Rights Watch has warned that the oil pipeline has already “devastated thousands of people’s livelihoods in Uganda” by displacing them from their homes “and will exacerbate the global climate crisis.” The project passes through multiple ecologically sensitive areas in Uganda and Tanzania and requires land acquisitions covering some 6,400 hectares. Consequently, villagers have reported cases of land grabbing, displacement, disruption to families and villages, and unfair and inadequate compensation for losses.

Impacted communities say the Ugandan state has enabled TotalEnergies in violating their rights. Nyakato Magreat, a single mother from Kasinyi village in Buliisa District, which had previously rejected TotalEnergies plan to make use of their lands, provided an example of the government’s role. Speaking at a mock tribunal organized by a coalition of civil societies, Make Big Polluters Pay (MBPP), last May, she recounted how soldiers invaded their village to force them to back down.

“The Hon. Minister for lands came to our community with many soldiers who were carrying guns, and most of us accepted the compensation amount of UGX 3,500,000 ($905) per acre, which we had earlier rejected out of fear. Total then gave me a small one-bedroom house on a small plot of land, despite my large family,” she said.

A December report by international NGO Global Witness also outlines evidence that TotalEnergies has been involved in efforts to intimidate impacted communities to accept offers for their land. The report documents cases where community members say they were forced to sign agreements without a chance to read them, as well as cases where armed security forces accompanied company and government officials making the compensation offers, pressuring them to sign.

TotalEnergies has denied involvement in the arrests of climate activists or pressured disposition of lands. In response to request for comment, the energy company said that it is committed to respecting internationally recognized human rights and standards anywhere it operates. A similar request for comment sent to the Ugandan Police Force went unanswered as at press time.

But activists continue to insist that the company is an accessory to violations committed by the Museveni government. “I think that the actions of Total and others amount to aiding and abetting injustices. By virtue of contract with the government, they have powers and can walk away if the other party/government violate people’s rights,” Kamugisha said via text. “But they are enjoying the outcomes of violence, displacements, and fear created.”

The Ugandan activists are not alone in their experience. Around the world, environmental activists face serious threats of violence as they defend their lands and the climate. What’s more, governments are increasingly criminalizing peaceful protest by climate protesters. That includes through the enactment of new anti-protest laws in places like Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and the enforcement of existing ones in places like Germany, Italy, France, India, and Egypt.

“EACOP IS A TIME BOMB which needs to be stopped as soon as possible due to the environment hazards and social violations it encompasses,” Mpiima Ibrahim, a climate activist and student of Kyambogo University, told the Journal. The 22-year old, who escaped arrest during the march in December, believes that although “many people say it is a pathway to development, EACOP is actually a pathway to extinction, since science has made it very clear that we have approximately one decade to cut down our global emissions before we face severe climate catastrophe.”

Despite contributing only 2 to 3 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, Africa continues to experience extreme weather events ranging from floods to droughts and to heatwaves, which leave a trail of destruction and fatalities. Last year, Libya’s storm-fueled flood claimed over 11,300 lives in September.

At around the same time, more than 3,000 people lost their lives due to flash floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and at least 860 people were killed in Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which affected Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Malawi, Réunion, and Zimbabwe, according to reports. Today, over 29 million people continue to face unrelenting drought conditions across Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Mauritania, and Niger.

All of which is why, amidst the brutal crackdowns, Ugandan climate activists are not backing down. “Everyday we make sure that we are doing something to stop this deadly project,” Abdul Aziiz says, “and our goal is to see that climate justice prevails and climate destroyers must be punished.”

Original Source: earthisland.org

MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK

Insurance firms should shun the East African Crude Oil Pipeline

Published

1 week ago

April 17, 2024

witnessradio.org

Police officers detain a Ugandan activist during a demonstration on September 15, 2023, over plans to build the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), in Kampala, Uganda [File: Abubaker Lubowa/Reuters]

The project is already devastating local communities and will contribute to climate change if completed.

Last year was the hottest on record, with extreme weather events in many corners of the globe. It was also the year in which countries reached a landmark agreement at the UN Climate Conference (COP28) to begin “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

If governments are to comply with this agreement and avert global climate collapse, there cannot be any new expansion of coal, oil and gas production. This includes the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), one of the largest and most controversial fossil fuel projects currently under development.

Financing for EACOP is yet to be secured, but if it is and the project moves forward, a 1,443km (897-mile) pipeline will stretch from oil fields in western Uganda to the port of Tanga in eastern Tanzania.

The project’s completion would not only contribute to increased greenhouse gas emissions which fuel climate change but also harm local communities. That is why, Human Rights Watch is calling on insurance firms to stop providing support for it.

The pipeline is planned to traverse some of Africa’s most sensitive ecosystems, including Murchison Falls National Park and the Murchison Falls-Albert Delta Ramsar site. Pipeline ruptures, inadequate waste handling, and other pollution impacts would cause significant damage to the land, water, air and the species that rely on them.

Our research found that the project’s initial land acquisition process has already devastated thousands of people’s livelihoods in Uganda, causing food insecurity and household debt that has resulted in children dropping out of school.

During our interviews with local communities, many described being largely self-sufficient before the project began, using revenue from coffee, bananas and other cash crops to pay for school fees and other household expenses. When their land was allocated for the pipeline construction, they were not compensated immediately for it.

They waited an average of three to five years after the land evaluation process took place, and interviewees repeatedly told Human Rights Watch that the payments they received were not adequate to purchase replacement land. They said they were worse off than they were previously.

While they were waiting for compensation, many farmers understood that they were not permitted to access their land to tend perennial crops, and were therefore deprived of crucial income.

Residents described how the payment delays impacted their food security, pushing them to sell household assets, including livestock, or borrow money from predatory lenders at excessive rates to buy the food they would have previously grown on their plots and cover other expenses. This has left many families poorer and more insecure about their future.

If the pipeline is completed, more than 100,000 people in Uganda and Tanzania will permanently lose land to make way for it.

Civil society groups in Uganda and Tanzania have called for the pipeline not to be built, citing climate, environmental and social risks. Ugandan civil society groups say that, instead of building the pipeline, the Ugandan government should develop its abundant renewable energy resources – particularly solar and hydropower – to drive economic development and secure access to energy without further contributing to climate change.

Their demands have been met with hostility from the Ugandan authorities. Our research documented the Ugandan government’s systematic harassment, arbitrary arrests of and threats against environmental defenders and anti-fossil fuel activists for raising concerns over the pipeline project and oil development.

In this context, it is deeply troubling that insurance companies are enabling this and other big fossil fuel projects by providing insurance for them. This is despite the fact that new oil projects are wholly inconsistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoiding the worst consequences of climate change.

In late 2023, Human Rights Watch wrote to 15 insurance and reinsurance companies and shared our findings on the grave environmental and human rights risks associated with the pipeline. Only two companies – Lloyd’s of London and Chubb – responded to us, and neither agreed to reassess their involvement in the project.

In early March, civil society groups across the world organised a global week of action to end fossil fuels, including confronting insurance companies about their role in the climate crisis and asking them to rule out support for fossil fuel projects. Anti-fossil fuel activists held peaceful protests at regional offices of the insurance companies still involved in the East African project with the message: “Insure our futures, not fossil fuels.” Increasing numbers of insurers have made public commitments to not underwrite the pipeline, but others have persisted.

Continued support for EACOP is a mistake. By underwriting the project, insurers are helping to build the longest heated oil pipeline in the world at a time when the world is warming at dangerous levels. Insurance companies should refuse to support this project.

Original Source: Aljazeera

MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK

How Kiryandongo land conflict has affected children

Published

2 weeks ago

April 8, 2024

witnessradio.org

Parents affected by the seven-year-old land conflict in Kiryandongo District have said hundreds of their children are facing hunger and lack of education.

The children have been forced out of school since 2017 and their parents, who derived livelihood mainly from cultivation, are now struggling to put food on the table since their land is now occupied by a ranch.

Currently, the farming families are now trapped in the middle of farms belonging to Agilis Partners, Great Season SMC Limited, and Kiryandongo Sugar Limited, who have set up ranches measuring about 9,300 acres in Mutunda and Kiryandongo sub-counties.

The ranch land had for long been occupied and farmed by more than 35,000 families who came to the area after they fled war and natural calamities from other districts in Uganda, according to Witness Radio, a non- governmental organisation.

Ms Esther Namuganza, a resident of Kimogoro Village, Mutunda Sub-county, lives with her five children in an area known as Ranch 20.

She recalls that on November 23, 2017, agents of Agilis Partners told the people living within Ranch 20 and 21 that it had acquired the land and that they would have to vacate.

“The first eviction took place on November 23, 2017. It was a Thursday. We grew big-headed and refused to vacate the ranches because we are the citizens of Uganda, we have nowhere to go,” she says.

Her family is one of a few that still remain on the land but with nowhere to grow food.

“We eat one meal a day and even at times we just take porridge. We don’t eat during the day to save for tomorrow. If you say I’m going to have lunch and supper, what about tomorrow?” Ms Namuganza wonders.

Annet Muganyizi, a former Senior Four student who dropped out of school in 2017, says all the schools, health facilities and water sources on the land have all been destroyed.

Mr John Byaruhanga of Nyamutende Village in Kiryandongo Sub-county said agriculture used to be their only source of livelihood in the ranches.

“When Agilis Partners came, everything changed for the worse. We were beaten, tortured and evicted at gunpoint. When we ask those armed men where they want us to go with our children and cattle, they just tell us to vacate. When you try to resist, they arrest you. I am one of those who have been arrested twice,” he says.

However, the spokesperson of Agilis Partners, Mr Emmanuel Onyango, earlier dismissed the allegations of unending forceful evictions.

“To be honest, I don’t know why people keep on accusing us of evictions yet we still have people residing on Ranch 20 and 21,” Mr Onyango said . He explained that if indeed they were evicting people, “there wouldn’t be anyone left on the land.”

Mr Jonathan Akweteireho, the Kiryandongo deputy RDC, said the Bunyoro land question cannot be sorted out without thinking about its history.

“We had 38 ranches here, which, on guidance of these international organisations, told the government to restructure the ranches. The ranches were restructured, people settled there, they were never given titles and up to today, there are big problems in all those ranches,” he said.

Source: Daily Monitor