The Land and
GLTN Unit conducted an extensive gap analysis in Uganda through multiple
scoping missions and studies. The analysis
drew several important conclusions. First,
while there is a good national land policy but few land laws and regulations
were enacted that are consistent with the provisions of the national land
policy and policy implementation is weak
due to lack of capacity and resources and the lack of pro-poor,
gender-sensitive and large-scale land tools. Second, a conclusion was that conventional land titling approaches
have largely failed to deliver their expected results: existing technical
solutions are too expensive, inappropriate for the range of tenure found in
developing countries, unsustainable financially or in terms of available
capacity, and instead a range of land tenure options is more appropriate. Third, an agreement was that land
sector work in country cannot be done at scale successfully in many countries
without the combination of various underlying factors and strategies including
better donor coordination, strengthening partnerships of key land actors,
capacity development initiatives and continuous
dialogues and communications between and amongst key stakeholders
including government (at various levels), professionals, civil society groups,
academia/research institutions, grassroots and target communities themselves.
To address
these challenges, the Land and GLTN Unit approached the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands, Kampala
-Uganda and proposed to spearhead a project to improve land tenure
security of smallholder famers particularly women and youth involved in the
Embassy’s Food Security Programme areas in Uganda. This project is strategically
framed by the transitional agenda of the Netherland’s Multi-Annual Strategic Plan
(MASP) 2014-2017 for Uganda. This transitional agenda guides the embassy’s focus
on economic cooperation (between the Netherlands and Uganda) giving substance to the
transition from aid to investments/trade.
The overall purpose of this project is
therefore, to improve land tenure security for rural smallholder farmers
particularly women, youth and vulnerable groups in order to increase food
security in select areas in Uganda.
