Beyond Legal Fixes: Rethinking Mailo-Kibanja for Economic Growth

For decades, Uganda has grappled with the Mailo-Kibanja land tenure system, primarily viewing it as a legal puzzle. While significant legal reforms, including constitutional protections and the Land Act of 1998, have secured the rights of kibanja holders against arbitrary eviction, the economic potential of this land remains largely untapped.

Despite robust legal instruments like the Certificate of Occupancy, which formally documents a tenant’s right to use a defined portion of Mailo land, the system fosters a dual-rights structure. This setup ensures coexistence but fails to facilitate economic aggregation, coordinated land use, or practical access to finance. Mailo owners’ authority is constrained, while kibanja holders lack the capacity to leverage land at scale, leading to underutilization and fragmentation.

The author argues that the current legal tools, while effective in preventing eviction and managing disputes, are insufficient for transforming economic relationships. Title by possession and Certificates of Occupancy, by design, reinforce this dual-interest structure rather than promoting economic cooperation.

To unlock economic potential, particularly in line with President Museveni’s Four-Acre Model which promotes integrated farming, land pooling is proposed as a viable solution. This approach allows small, fragmented kibanja holdings to be combined into economically viable units, enabling large-scale farming, livestock systems, and justifiable infrastructure investments.

The National Land Policy needs to evolve beyond regulating coexistence to actively enabling economic cooperation. This requires policy instruments that facilitate land pooling, cooperative farming, and the separation of ownership from secured, long-term use rights. The Mailo-Kibanja challenge is no longer a matter of legal reform, but of unfinished economic design.

Source: Daily Monitor (Uganda)