Land prolongs poverty's tenure

from the Guardian

Why are so many acres of arable land lying unused in Katine? Richard M Kavuma investigates the controversial issue of land ownership

By Richard M Kavuma

After more than half an hour in animated conversation with John Erupu, a farmer and local councillor in Katine, we agreed that we were friends and he even invited me to visit his village and meet his family.

"By the way, John, since you have 10 acres of land, would you consider selling me one acre?" I suggested. The tone of his voice changed abruptly.

"No," he replied emphatically, "I cannot sell to you because my culture does not accept that. We have to meet as a clan and they listen to the problem I have that is forcing me to sell the land. If they are convinced, they may allow me."

This reminded me of Phoebe Ageo, 35, a leader of one of the farmer groups supported by Amref's Katine Community Partnerships Project. I had met Ageo two months earlier at her home in Adamasiko village. Prosperous by Katine standards, she said one of her constraints was land; she wanted to expand her gardens of cassava and groundnut beyond three acres but could not easily find land. But as I left her homes, I couldn't help but notice large chunks of apparently arable land lying idle nearby.

Erupu and Ageo typify the paradox of land in Katine: so much of it is lying fallow under the watchful eye of its owners – yet there is not enough land for those itching to farm. Some people try to rent land but Erupu says he would not do this as the person renting might misuse it or suddenly try and claim full ownership.

"It is something that is hard for us to understand," says Venansio Tumuhaise, Amref's project officer for livelihoods. "There is a lot of land but those who want to farm cannot touch it. It gets even worse when you find that the same people cannot afford implements like ox-ploughs to till the land."

What harm would it do Erupu, I ask, to sell me one of his five acres of land currently lying unfarmed? "If owners are allowed to sell their land, the next generation will not have anything to inherit. No land should be wasted in this way. It is good to sell only a bit so that any children that are born will get some land," he says.

Under legally recognised land tenure systems, land in the Teso region is held under a strict regime of customary ownership. In some other areas, those who inherit land can give it to other relatives or even sell it off, but not so easily in Teso. Here clans have to approve and, as Erupu said, the committee of his Igwetoma clan could dismiss an application unless it were persuaded by his reasons for wanting to sell.

Ostensibly such a rigid system discourages reckless young men who would otherwise inherit land, refuse to work and survive by selling off parcels of their inheritance to the detriment of their future offspring and other family members.

But while this system ensures that John Erupu has enough land for his children and grandchildren, it will not help Amref's desire to see bumper harvests and better incomes across Katine. Tumuhaise believes it would make business sense for someone who has a lot of idle land, to buy ox-ploughs and oxen and open up larger farms with higher productivity. But under the present land tenure system here, that is far from simple.

Which takes us 350 kilometres to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where parliament has spent ten years trying to reform the land tenure system in Uganda – with laughable results. According to one researcher, the key principle driving Uganda's land reforms is to make it easy for those who own land to transfer ownership, mortgage it or even sell off the land. That way, landowners could use it to get bank loans for development of the land, and progressive farmers such as Ageo, who need more land, could easily access it.

This is critical to the development of Uganda. With some 80 per cent of the population still living in rural areas, the government has prescribed a steady commercialisation of agriculture as the surefire way out of poverty, but doesn't seem to know how to make the medicine work. One bottleneck is the land-holding system in the rural areas.

A great percentage of land in Uganda – as much as 70 per cent – is owned customarily rather than through the modern legal system, and lawmakers here seem incapable of legislating to make that land marketable.

The latest attempt is the Land (Amendment) Bill 2007, now in parliament, which is seeking to end what government calls "mass evictions" of people by registered owners – but this bill has caused ripples across the country. Critics, including some of Uganda's top lawyers, argue that the thrust of the bill is to make it very difficult for a registered owner of land to evict squatters from it. Although the bill currently targets areas of central and mid-western Uganda, there is fear that its provisions will later have grave consequences for areas in northern and eastern Uganda.

Not surprisingly cultural leaders in Teso have moved swiftly to condemn the bill. "Our position is that this bill is very bad for Teso," said Source Opak, information minister for the Teso cultural institution. "This legislation will simply facilitate grabbing of customary land."

For now though, the Uganda government, eager to push through the law, has mooted amendments to the effect that the more controversial aspects of the bill would not affect areas such as Teso or northern Uganda.

Unfortunately, according to one of Uganda's leading development economists, this spells doom for the agriculture sector in areas such as Katine. Dr Augustus Nuwagaba believes that land in Katine is not regarded as an economic commodity, but a cultural one, hence the difficulties in developing it.
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