Mailo, customary and leasehold interests: the Ugandan RAP problem a title search cannot solve

1. Four tenure categories do not mean four claimant types

The constitutional recognition of customary, freehold, mailo and leasehold describes tenure systems, not the full set of people who may be affected by acquisition. [1] A tenant, spouse, cultivator, licensee, heir or communal user may have a practical interest that does not appear as a registered estate.

The Land Act context therefore supports a layered inquiry: what is registered, who occupies, who uses, who receives income, who can verify the claim and what interest is affected by the project. [2] Mailo is the sharpest case, because the Act's own protection of lawful and bona fide occupants presupposes that a registered proprietor and a person in occupation may both hold interests in the same parcel. [2] Where an acquisition is compensated to the registrant alone, the occupant's interest has not been extinguished; it has simply not been counted — and the debate over amending Article 26 turned in part on how such contested claims should be handled before possession. [3]

2. Eligibility without inventing title

A lender-standard RAP should not solve documentary uncertainty by declaring every claimant an owner, nor by excluding everyone who lacks a title. PS-5's three eligibility categories are built for exactly this: the third covers people with no recognisable legal right or claim, who are owed resettlement assistance rather than compensation for land. [4] Guidance Note 5 is explicit that customary and undocumented use rights are entitlements notwithstanding the absence of a register entry. [5] It should record the claim, evidence, decision-maker, entitlement category and any unresolved dispute separately.

That distinction protects both the project and the claimant. It makes an assistance decision auditable without pretending that a field interview has adjudicated a land title dispute.

3. Research gap

The missing evidence is a comparative study of how Ugandan projects identify secondary interests and how those people fare after acquisition. Published work tends to discuss tenure categories or legal reform; it less often follows the claimant through census, award, payment, grievance and livelihood outcome.