Uganda’s land tenure landscape is among the most complicated in Africa. Four systems coexist: customary tenure, which dominates rural areas and governs land through clan-based norms rather than written documents; freehold, which grants absolute ownership; leasehold, which conveys temporary rights; and mailo tenure, a colonial-era system established under the 1900 Buganda Agreement that grants perpetual ownership while protecting the rights of long-term tenants, creating overlapping claims that remain among the most contested in the country. The study’s authors argue that this duality of customary and statutory law produces persistent ambiguity. Farmers may hold land through inheritance and clan recognition yet lack any formal documentation, leaving them exposed to eviction, litigation, and manipulation by more powerful actors.

The interviews, conducted with farmers, local council leaders, district land officers, agricultural extension workers, and community development officers across the three districts, were transcribed and analyzed thematically. The researchers selected participants purposively to capture a broad range of perspectives, and rigor was reinforced through triangulation, member checking, and an audit trail of analytic decisions. Participants ranged in age from 20 to 66, with men predominating at 18 of the 27 informants. What emerged was a consistent picture of tenure insecurity operating as a structural driver of food insecurity, interacting with environmental stress and market failure in ways that compound household vulnerability.

Perhaps the most striking findings concern inheritance. In all three districts, the absence of written wills and formal succession mechanisms was described as a principal destabilizing force. One farmer in Mbale described how, when a father dies without documentation, sons fight violently over boundaries, with elder brothers claiming larger portions while younger siblings are marginalized, forcing clan elders into lengthy mediation that strains community relationships. In Luwero, an agricultural officer reported that three brothers had been fighting over their father’s eight-acre plot for a decade, leaving it fallow while they argued. Such disputes withdraw productive land from cultivation during critical growing periods, contributing to soil degradation, weed overgrowth, and missed agricultural seasons—losses that fall hardest on women and children, who are frequently excluded from customary inheritance norms.

Informal documentation compounds the problem. Across the study districts, land is commonly transferred through oral agreements witnessed by local leaders or rudimentary handwritten notes. A local council chairman in Mbale explained that when these witnesses die or disputes arise decades later, there is no written evidence of the original terms, allowing powerful families to rewrite history and seize property from vulnerable heirs such as orphans and widows. In Luwero, where distance from legal services and prohibitive costs make formalization inaccessible, an agricultural officer estimated that only about three percent of farmers can afford lawyers, meaning most lose land cases even when they are in the right. The result is a structural injustice in which tenure insecurity reinforces agricultural marginalization and food precarity.

Clan-based land allocation introduces a further layer of complexity. In Mbale, informants reported that use rights are allocated based on loyalty and tradition rather than productivity, meaning the most skilled farmers may receive small plots while politically connected members receive prime acreage. In Bukedea, purchased land could revert to collective clan control if never formally registered, undermining the incentive to invest. In Luwero, youth expressed frustration with customary rules requiring extended periods of unpaid labor before land access was granted, generating intergenerational conflict between traditional authority and emerging demands for individual title. Leasehold arrangements proved equally problematic: seasonal leases that expire right after harvest give tenants no security to invest in soil improvement or perennial crops, trapping them in cycles of low-productivity, extractive agriculture.

Even freehold ownership, widely viewed as the most secure form of tenure, remains largely out of reach. A Ministry of Lands informant in Mbale described a titling process requiring fourteen separate steps across five government offices, with bureaucrats allegedly slowing proceedings to extract bribes at each stage. In Luwero, farmers reportedly spend up to four years and 450,000 Ugandan shillings to title land, with most abandoning the process early when confronted with surveyor fees. Without title deeds, farmers cannot use land as collateral, cannot access formal credit, and remain exposed to encroachment. Financial institutions are reluctant to lend to farmers with insecure rights, pushing smallholders toward informal lenders and limiting investment in improved seeds, irrigation, and mechanization—a pattern the authors note mirrors findings from Tanzania and Malawi.

These tenure failures interact with a set of environmental and economic barriers that the study identifies as jointly producing food insecurity. Land scarcity driven by population growth and fragmentation has reduced household plots in Bukedea to less than half an acre in some cases, too small for effective rotation, mechanization, or diversification, pushing cultivation onto marginal wetlands and steep hillsides. Continuous monocropping without fallow periods has degraded soils, with one Bukedea farmer describing topsoil that has become dust-like and literally blows away during dry spells. Climate variability has rendered traditional planting calendars useless, with destructive torrential rains, the disappearance of the short rains season, and nighttime temperature spikes causing bean crops to flower without forming pods. Land conflicts, including land grabbing by businessmen and speculative brokers pressuring elderly owners to sell ancestral plots at a fraction of their value, further disrupt production, while exploitative market systems—transporters charging up to 40 percent of a crop’s value for short distances, traders buying wilted produce at desperate prices—strip farmers of the returns needed to invest in the next season.

Gender inequality threads through every one of these mechanisms. Although women constitute the majority of Uganda’s agricultural labor force, patriarchal norms subordinate their land rights to those of male relatives, limiting access to credit, inputs, and decision-making. The study cites evidence that less than 20 percent of registered land in Uganda is owned by women, even as global research shows that strengthening women’s land rights is among the most effective levers against rural poverty and food insecurity. Comparable evidence from Ghana and Ethiopia demonstrates that women with secure rights invest more in soil fertility management and achieve higher yields and better household nutrition. The authors also acknowledge limitations: relying exclusively on key informants may have underrepresented the direct perspectives of women, youth, and small-scale farmers, and qualitative findings are context-specific.

The study’s conclusions point toward a coordinated, multisectoral response. The authors recommend systematic land registration and community-based dispute resolution developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Lands, district land boards, and customary leaders, alongside integration of customary practices rather than their displacement. They propose scaling up soil and water conservation through terracing, agroforestry, and rainwater harvesting via agricultural extension services, expanding drought-tolerant seed varieties and crop insurance, and investing in feeder roads, storage facilities, and farmer cooperatives to reduce post-harvest losses. They note that while political will exists in frameworks such as Uganda’s National Development Plan III, limited fiscal resources constrain implementation, making partnerships between government, civil society, and donors critical. What the research makes unmistakably clear is that food security in rural Uganda cannot be achieved through agricultural technology alone: until the questions of who owns the land, who inherits it, and who can defend their claim to it are resolved, the fields of Mbale, Bukedea, and Luwero will continue to feed conflict and hunger rather than the families who work them.

Subject of Research: Land tenure insecurity and its effects on food security in rural Uganda

Article Title: Land tenure and food security in rural Uganda: a qualitative study from Mbale, Bukedea, and Luwero districts of Uganda

Article References: Wabusa, F. D., Lutale, A. J., & Oino, P. G. (2025). Land tenure and food security in rural Uganda: a qualitative study from Mbale, Bukedea, and Luwero districts of Uganda. BMC Agriculture, 1(1), Article 18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44399-025-00020-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44399-025-00020-y

Keywords: land tenure, food security, Uganda, customary tenure, inheritance disputes, land titling, gender inequality, soil degradation, climate variability, land conflicts, rural livelihoods, qualitative research