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

The research team deliberately chose three districts that span Uganda’s fragmented tenure landscape. Under the Land Act of 1998, amended in 2010, Uganda formally recognizes four tenure systems: freehold, leasehold, Mailo, and customary. Customary tenure dominates in Eastern Uganda, including Mbale and Bukedea, while Luwero in the central Buganda region hosts a mix of customary, freehold, and Mailo arrangements. Mbale, with a population of 410,300 across five rural sub-counties, is characterized by subsistence farming and widespread land fragmentation. Bukedea, with 112,213 rural residents spread across 14 sub-counties, experiences persistent tenure insecurity and recurrent environmental shocks. Luwero, located about 64 kilometers north of Kampala, has a population of 456,958, with 81 percent of households engaged in subsistence agriculture and only 21 percent living in urban areas. This diversity allowed the researchers to compare how different governance regimes translate into food outcomes within a single national context, an approach few studies have attempted.

Methodologically, the study was rigorous for a field survey. The sample size of 398 was calculated using Yamane’s formula applied to a target population of 51,046 individuals across the three districts, with a precision level of 0.05. Participants were adult farmers aged 18 and above who were responsible for household land use and agricultural decision-making. A multi-stage sampling strategy stratified sub-counties by geographic location and agricultural productivity, then randomly selected villages and systematically sampled households within them. Data were collected through a structured, expert-reviewed, and pretested questionnaire administered face-to-face by trained enumerators, with internal consistency assessed by Cronbach’s alpha at an acceptable value of 0.75. Analysis proceeded in three phases in Stata 18: univariate description, bivariate cross-tabulation with Pearson’s chi-square tests, and finally a binary logistic regression model reporting adjusted odds ratios with 95 percent confidence intervals, adjusted for confounders including household size, education level, and access to agricultural land.

The headline result is stark. Households with sufficient land for food production had roughly 22 times higher odds of being food secure than those without adequate land (adjusted odds ratio 22.08, 95 percent confidence interval 6.25 to 77.97). In the bivariate analysis, 96.2 percent of households reporting insufficient land were food insecure, compared with 61.7 percent food security among those with adequate land, a difference significant at p less than 0.001. How land was acquired mattered nearly as much as how much of it there was. Land inherited from family members conferred about 6.6 times higher odds of food security (AOR 6.62, 95 percent CI 1.12 to 39.18), while newly acquired land was associated with roughly fivefold higher odds (AOR 4.99, 95 percent CI 1.14 to 21.85). Inheritance, the authors note, typically comes with socially recognized claims that support continuity in land use and the intergenerational transfer of agricultural knowledge.

Two agronomic variables produced even larger effects than tenure itself. Access to irrigation was associated with about 27 times higher odds of food security (AOR 27.39, 95 percent CI 2.52 to 297.55), despite irrigation remaining rare across the study sites; only 16.2 percent of food-secure households reported irrigation access versus 3.2 percent of food-insecure ones. Adoption of farming technologies and risk management practices within the previous five years was reported by 39.6 percent of food-secure households but just 4.4 percent of food-insecure households, and it carried an adjusted odds ratio of 14.71 (95 percent CI 1.37 to 158.23). In a country where rainfall patterns are becoming increasingly erratic and prolonged dry spells more common, these numbers suggest that water control and technology adoption function as powerful protective factors against production failure, stabilizing yields and enabling year-round cultivation in ways that rain-fed subsistence farming cannot.

On the destructive side of the ledger, pest and disease outbreaks emerged as the single most damaging factor measured. Households affected by outbreaks, including infestations of Fall Armyworm, a caterpillar pest that devastates maize and other staples, had dramatically reduced odds of food security (AOR 0.01, 95 percent CI 0.00 to 0.11). In the bivariate analysis, only 55.5 percent of pest-affected households were food secure compared with 83.8 percent of unaffected households. The authors point to prior Ugandan research reporting that 64 percent of farmers in Kamuli and 82 percent in Namutumba regarded Fall Armyworm as a serious threat to production. The implication is urgent: integrated pest management, timely extension services, and access to resistant crop varieties are not optional extras but core components of any food security strategy in the region.

The tenure typology itself also shaped outcomes in ways consistent with economic theory. Households under freehold and customary systems were significantly more food secure than those under leasehold or Mailo arrangements. The authors attribute this to the greater perceived tenure security and autonomy over land use under freehold and customary regimes, which encourage long-term investment in soil conservation, irrigation infrastructure, and tree planting. Leasehold and Mailo systems, by contrast, are often characterized by unclear ownership rights, limited user control, and disputes that discourage investment in productivity-enhancing inputs. This aligns with a broader literature linking tenure insecurity to land degradation, reduced access to credit, and suboptimal land use, and with recent Ugandan evidence that tenure insecurity remains a binding constraint on productivity, particularly in Mailo-affected regions such as Luwero.

Land loss tells the mirror-image story. Among households reporting changes in land access, 44.7 percent of food-secure households had gained land, whereas 70.3 percent of food-insecure households reported losing it, a difference significant at p equal to 0.048. Land disputes were reported by 46.2 percent of food-insecure households compared with 33.3 percent of food-secure ones, and negative perceptions of the tenure system’s effect on food access were more prevalent among the food insecure (38.6 percent versus 25.0 percent, p equal to 0.005). In an agrarian economy, land is simultaneously the means of food production, a source of income, and a form of social identity; losing it through eviction, boundary conflict, or market displacement removes the productive base with little possibility of substitution. Notably, households reporting no conflicts with neighbors showed reduced odds of food insecurity (AOR 0.15, 95 percent CI 0.02 to 0.92), underscoring how local social relations mediate tenure security.

Perhaps the most sobering finding concerns gender. Female-headed households constituted only 10.6 percent of landowners in the sample, even though women are central to food production across the study region. Male-headed households dominated land ownership and were more likely to be food secure, a pattern the authors link to structural gender barriers that limit women’s access to and control over land. The study joins a growing body of work, from Ghana to Mozambique to Malawi, showing that gendered tenure access shapes food and nutrition security, particularly under urbanization pressure. The authors argue that addressing these inequities requires comprehensive strategies including joint land titling, legal empowerment, and the integration of women into land governance structures, rather than piecemeal interventions.

The study’s policy implications are concrete. The authors recommend reforming leasehold and Mailo tenures through legal harmonization and efficient land administration, scaling up the issuance of Certificates of Customary Ownership, facilitating joint titling, strengthening district-level dispute resolution, and improving legal literacy among land users. In parallel, they call for investment in small-scale irrigation infrastructure, integrated pest management, improved seeds, and climate-smart technologies, with extension services expanded especially in tenure-insecure regions. They also urge that land tenure reform be mainstreamed as a cross-cutting issue in Uganda’s National Development Plans. The authors acknowledge limitations: the cross-sectional design cannot establish causation, self-reported data may carry recall bias, purposive district selection limits national generalizability, and food security was measured as a composite rather than disaggregated into availability, access, utilization, and stability. Still, the core message stands out with unusual clarity. In rural Uganda, the path to resilient food systems runs directly through land governance, and a family’s dinner table is secured, or emptied, by the fine print of who holds the land and how surely they hold it.

Subject of Research: The impact of land tenure systems on household food security in rural Uganda

Article Title: Land tenure systems and their impact on food security in Mbale, Bukedea, and Luwero Districts, Uganda

Article References: Wabusa, F. D., Lutale, A. J., & Oino, P. G. (2025). Land tenure systems and their impact on food security in Mbale, Bukedea, and Luwero Districts, Uganda. BMC Agriculture, 1(1), Article 20. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44399-025-00018-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44399-025-00018-6

Keywords: land tenure, food security, Uganda, customary tenure, Mailo tenure, irrigation, Fall Armyworm, land inheritance, gender equity, smallholder farming, land disputes, agricultural technology