Hunt, Diana. "Unintended Consequences of Land Rights Reform: The Case of the 1998 Uganda Land Act". Development Policy Review, Vol.22, No.2 (2004): 173–191.

Hunt, Diana. "Unintended Consequences of Land Rights Reform: The Case of the 1998 Uganda Land Act". Development Policy Review, Vol.22, No.2 (2004): 173–191.

• The author engages with an argument made by Dr. Hernardo De Soto, who argues that one of key reasons for economic success in the West was the establishment of systems of formal property rights which allowed all owners of land or goods to safely and securely profit from surplus capital. Formal recognition of properties in Africa is usually limited to the elite, leaving a majority of the population without formal legal status and thus unable to properly exploit surplus capital, stymieing economic development (173-174).
• The author critiques some of the policy suggests made by Dr. De Soto for being impractical in many developing countries. While formalizing property rights may be beneficial, its implementation requires an efficient administration with little tolerance for corruption, otherwise abuse and exploitation will be rampant during the formalization (174).
• Source mine of other examples of land reform in Sub-Saharan Africa available on page 175.
• Land policy in Uganda begins with a 1900 treaty between Great Britain and the Kingdom of Buganda, which granted tracts of land to the King of Buganda. This land was worked by peasant smallholders, who had been subject to noble rather than royal authority before the law (175).
• The 1927 Busulu and Envujo Law attempted to formalize and regularize the land system, transforming peasant levies into a set annual tax, with additional levies on acreage used for cotton production (175).
• Neither of these land reform laws clarified the status of the actual farmers on the royal land grants, a situation made even less clear for peasants on land held by the British crown outside of Bugandan patrimony (175).
• In 1969, Uganda passed the Public Lands Law, which gave control of all land that was not either owned privately or by the King of Buganda to a Land Commission. This include large areas of agricultural land in the North and West of the countries. It gave these farmers rights, requiring compensation or consent in the case of redistribution (176).
• In 1975, President Idi Amin passed a Land Reform Decree which officially transformed all land into public land leased out by the state to private persons or the King of Buganda. This decree removed any prior requirements for compensation or consent for expropriation. Fortunately, administrators and farmers largely ignored the law (176).
• Following a period of civil war, President Yoweri Museveni's government faced pressure to give more land security, particularly to groups forced off their land by the conflict. At the same time as local groups pressured for increase protections for traditional owners, international financial institutions and large commercial farmers urged for a privatization of Ugandan land either held by the state or the King of Buganda (176).
• This issue was addressed in the drafting of the 1995 Constitution, as that document set out requirements for the government to protect the rights of customary landholders (176).
• The 1998 Land Act maintains fundamental state ownership of land, but aimed to protect the land rights of both private and communal farms by issuing formal legal certificates of land tenure for both systems. It also sets out a method for customary landholders to convert small plots of communal land into private farms, and a system of courts dealing specifically with issues relating to land tenure (177).
• Farmers can apply for official certificates of customary land tenure if they received land through a royal grant from the King of Buganda or if they have been using a plot of land for at least 12 years without molestation. This certificate can be inherited, and can also be upgraded to a private title to land in some cases (177-178).
• The law provides for specific protection against abuse by allowing land courts to override any decision about land tenure if such a decision would remove people whose primary residence is on the land, or who depend on that land for sustenance farming (178).
• A land fund is created by the 1998 law, with financial resources to support any legal fires incurred by those applying for certificates to communal land tenure, and to compensate traditional landlords whose property was reduced by peasants claiming land tenure (179).
• A significant unintended consequence of the 1998 Land Act was that eminent domain claims became more legally difficult for Ugandan local governments, as landowners -- urban and rural -- were now allowed to receive substantial compensation as they officially owned the land. This has significantly raised the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure (180).
• The Land Act has also reduced the revenue of urban areas, as prior to 1998, all public land in urban areas, including customary farming land, could be taxed by those areas. As land taxes now go to specialized land boards, urban areas have lost out an important source of local revenue (180).
• Hopes that the 1998 Land Act would result in a rapid expansion of access to credit services, and thus increases in agricultural productivity, were misplaced. While access to credit has increased, most banks simply do not lend to smallholders due to the considerable risk involved. Loans to small farmers make up a small proportional and absolute number of bank transactions (181-182).
• Land boards set up in local communities have become important elements of agricultural life there, and have taken on roles in addition to those envisions by the Land Act. In additional to enabling the certification of customary land holdings, these boards often act as informal courts for managing local land disputes (187-188).