Providing Secure Tenure for All: A Country Implementation Strategy for Fit-For-Purpose land Administration:The Case of Uganda

In this paper, we present and discuss the principles, approach and provisions for a
country implementation strategy for Fit for Purpose Land Administration in Uganda. FFP LA is a relatively new paradigm that puts into consideration, the cultural, social, economic and political context of a country, to build components of land administration at a low cost, in a rapid non-exclusive manner, so as to benefit all land rights holders. The Fit–For-Purpose Land Administration (FFP LA) concept has gained recognition by governments, global professional bodies and international development agencies, as a complementary approach to conventional land administration. However, FFP LA implementation at National level, still remains a challenge for many developing countries. In Uganda, conventional land administration approaches have only managed to record 500,000 parcels (2%) out of the estimated 23 million parcels country-wide, and this has taken more than 100 years. Yet, more than 80% of the land is held customarily and is characterized by underdevelopment, land conflicts, land grabbing and overlapping land rights.
Uganda has developed a country implementation strategy for FFP LA. The strategy
was developed through a bottoms up approach that utilized a combination of review of the c ountry's land administration context, use of GLTN published guidelines for FFP LA country level implementation, consideration of international best practices and local stakeholder consultations and endorsements. The strategy will improve the existing complicated, sporadic, bureaucratic and expensive approaches to Land administration and pave the way for registration of an estimated 23 million parcels within a period of 10 years, at a cost of US $ 500 million. Based on various pilot projects, the cost of registration of each parcel is estimated at about US $ 10 while the cost of rapid physical planning appraisal, awareness campaigns, and establishing land administration infrastructure across the entire country is estimated at US $ 11 per parcel.