Author: Robert Atuhairwe

Over 1,000 residents have been evicted from a contested piece of land in Kapapi 2 village, Kapapi Sub-County in Hoima district. Residents said the eviction which took place in the wee hours on Sunday left several houses demolished, burnt, property including domestic animals and crops allegedly stolen. The residents were evicted from two titled pieces of land owned by tycoons based in Hoima and Kampala, respectively. One of the titles measuring 2,545 acres (1,030 hectares) is owned by six people who include; Gafayo Ndahura, Aston Muhwezi, David Mpora, Monica Rashindika, Wilber Kiiza and Agaba H. The title also stretches some…

Owners of 500 business enterprises are to benefit from a training programme funded by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) with priority given to women-led start-ups. The training will start this February and run for two weeks and will be offered by the Stanbic Business Incubator Limited (SBIL), a subsidiary of Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited (SUHL), which supports and nurtures small and medium enterprises to prepare them for business growth. SBIL Chief Executive, Tony Otoa, in a February 8 press release said the proposed training will be delivered with a key focus on three core areas namely; access to…

The government has acquired a piece of land in Kasambya village, Katikara sub-county in Kakumiro district where one of the four labour camps will be established during construction of a 1,445 kilometre East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). The other camps are to be set up in Hoima, Mubende and Rakai which are some of the 10 districts to be traversed by the EACOP to export crude oi from Hoima to Tanga port in Tanzania. Each labour camp is estimated to host an estimated 1,000 workers including expatriates, construction crew-welders, drivers, foremen and ICT specialists. Martin Tiffen, the managing director…

An oil drilling programme at Kingfisher Development Area (KDA) in Buhuka village, Kyangwali Sub-County, Kikuube district, has started. The drilling rig which arrived in Uganda in September and its installation works concluded in November last year was switched on by President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday to start actual drilling works. Kingfisher Oil field which is operated by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) Uganda Limited, on the shore of Lake Albert, has a planned central Processing Facility (CPF) with a capacity of 40,000 barrels of oil per day and 31 oil wells to be drilled on 4 well pads, 16…

Two Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have delivered food items to residents who were evicted from their ancestral land in Kyangwali sub-county in Kikuube district. The over 1,000 residents have pitched camp in an internally displaced camp kind of set-up, near the Resident District Commissioner’s (RDC’s) office since February last year. The affected mainly women, men and children were evicted from Bukinda parish in Kyangwali sub-county in the villages of Bukinda A and B, Kyeya A and B, Bukinda 2, Kavule, Bwizibwera A and B, Kabirizi, Nyaruhanga and Nyamigisa, among others. They were evicted in September 2013 by the Office of the…

As Uganda races to end over a decade’s wait to pump out its first oil by 2025, the country is facing the puzzle of extracting the resource from the complex and ecologically sensitive, Kingfisher Development Area (KFDA) whilst protecting the environment. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) Uganda Limited operated KDFA is sandwiched between the winding ridges of the Western Rift valley and the calm blue waters of Lake Albert. It is the second biggest oil production project after Tilenga with an anticipated production capacity of 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) when production commences. On a normal sunny day, the expanse adjacent to KFDA…

In the course of the 1980s and 1990s the US philanthropy body: Carnegie Corporation of New York sustained a sociology Think Tank, “Carnegie Commission on adolescents development”. It is devoted to documenting the taxonomy of reality besetting the maturation and fruition of a juvenile through the dark tunnel of transition from child to a responsible and productive adult. Samuel Tumusiime and Hilda. C’s book, “The girl child; Growing to Become a Woman of Value” is an inadvertent regurgitation of the same endeavour from the unique angle of a community volunteer and social activist. A girl-child specifically is defined simply as…

Oil curse refers to a series of evils and contradictions which have tended to accompany any oil extraction and oil production venture, especially the less developed countries. These include mainly impoverishment and marginalisation of the local population in the production areas, the prevalence of high unemployment and crime rates, widespread and total environmental devastation and desertification features. The emergency of political tension and conflicts about the sharing of oil revenues, the worsening of income inequality and social injustice and a whole spectrum of features of accelerated social decay and social disintegration including broken homes, teenage pregnancy, school dropout, high crime…

The trial of a case in which a section of Non-Governmental Organisations are seeking to stop construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) shall start on Wednesday in France. In October 2019, six Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) tracking developments in Uganda’s oil and gas industry brought proceedings against TotalEnergies in France claiming that it had not sufficiently managed and identified social and environmental impacts of Tilenga and EACOP projects in Uganda and Tanzania. This follows collapse of mediation. In a statement published on October 12, TotalEnergies said NGOs snubbed mediation process which had been proposed by Paris civil court and…

Nigerian firm Oranto Petroleum Limited (OPL) has kicked-off open dialogues with stakeholders as it moves to start drilling its Ngassa Exploration block on Lake Albert in Hoima district. During a stakeholders engagement at HB Hotel in Hoima City on November 24, Abdu Byakagaba, the OPL General Manager, said engagements which are part of conditions in the license, helps them to understand community needs and adhere to them during the drilling and to ensure a win-win situation. He said the-engagements are also meant to identify opportunities, health and safety and environmental regulations and how fishing activities will be managed. Ngassa block…