Losing Ground? The Unprecedented Shrinking of Public Spaces and Land in Ugandan Municipalities
There is increasing importance being attached to public spaces and other municipal assets, such as land, in promoting inclusive and resilient cities. Urban land is a municipality’s most valuable resource, but it is liable to misuse.
The issue of land in Uganda has been a contentious one, sometimes resulting in violence, murders and chaos. As urban areas grow, public spaces and land risk becoming occupied, reallocated and grabbed. It is a distressing reality of many municipalities across Uganda that their public spaces and land are shrinking and disappearing altogether.
The Auditor General of Uganda in his reports has expressed concern at the rate at which government land is being lost to encroachers at unprecedented scales with little or no concern from the respective government entities. The most affected lands are government schools, the Ministry of Agriculture, universities, the Uganda police force, and the defence forces (Wamajja, 2016), but urban areas have not been spared either. The shrinkage of public spaces and land across many municipalities, including many rural areas in Uganda, has raised political, media and public concern.
