Rent-Seeking Practices, Local Resource Curse, and Social Conflict in Uganda’s Emerging Oil Economy

Abstract

We consider the different types of rent-seeking practices in emerging oil economies, and discuss how they contribute to social conflict and a local resource curse in the Albertine Graben region of Uganda. The rent-seeking activities have contributed to speculative behavior, competition for limited social services, land grabbing, land scarcity, land fragmentation, food insecurity, corruption, and ethnic polarization. Local people have interpreted the experience of the consequent social impacts as a local resource curse. The impacts have led to social conflicts among the affected communities. Our research used a range of methods, including 40 in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant observation, and document analysis. We argue there is an urgent need by all stakeholders—including local and central governments, oil companies, local communities, and civil society organizations—to address the challenges before the construction of oil infrastructure. Stakeholders must work hard to create the conditions that are needed to avoid the resource curse; otherwise, Uganda could end up suffering from the Dutch Disease and Nigerian Disease, as has befallen other African countries.

Conceptualizing Company Response to Community Protest: Principles to Achieve a Social License to Operate

“…For example, a change to a Western diet, which usually accompanies the presence of new large projects in a region, can have grave consequences for Indigenous people's health, wellbeing, and social capital, due to the reduction in traditional food-related practices and associated social events [92]. Social impacts that are not properly managed can create serious long-term consequences for communities, including impoverishment, landlessness, homelessness, joblessness, marginalization and alienation, food insecurity, reduced health and wellbeing, loss of access to common property resources, social disarticulation, and impacts on sense of place [86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97]. Such impacts are often difficult to mitigate after they have occurred and can create irreversible long-term impacts, especially for Indigenous communities, which can, in extreme cases, arguably lead to genocide or ethnocide (the destruction of a particular culture and its way of living) [98].…”

Participatory Rural Appraisal Approaches for Public Participation in EIA: Lessons from South Africa

“…On average there were four to seven people in these households, so these discussions involved 45-50 people. Although this engagement originated from the EIA for the photovoltaic development, the issues that emerged were not directly related to the photovoltaic development, but included more generic social issues such as unemployment, sanitation, distrust of authority, and distrust of public meetings 4 . The research team members themselves experienced some of this distrust, being seen as part of the authorities.…”

“…One significant difference from the study at Theunissen was that in Koffiefontein ( Figure 3) the Community Forum had made a formal appeal against the proposed photo voltaic farm. Following the commencement of the EIA PP process, and the awareness amongst the Community forum about the proposal, a community meeting 5 was held in which it was decided to appeal the proposal because the 4 The responses presented here for Theunissen and Koffiefontein are a summary of the responses as a whole, reflecting the main themes that emerged from the engagements. 5 This was a community forum initiative separate from the EIA PP process.…”

“…However, the local communities most likely will receive little direct benefit from the utilization of this energy resource. This phenomenon is known as the local resource curse [4]. Rather than the local communities being empowered, they become vulnerable to rent-seeking practices, including land grabbing, corruption, bribery, speculation, and unfair compensation.…”

Transnational land acquisitions beyond the food and financial crises

“…More recently, some have attempted to identify determinants of LSLA through econometric and regression models (Conigliani et al 2018, Kareem 2018, Lay and Nolte 2018). Yet, indepth insights moving beyond data analysis and contextualizing LSLA within the framework of the commodification and financialization of nature remain limited to case studies (Bottazzi et al 2018, Cavanagh 2018, Vos and Roth 2018, Ogwang and Vanclay 2019 or more theoretical research (Borras et al 2012, Margulis 2015, Teklemariam et al 2015, Anseeuw et al 2017. We thus attempt to bridge the gap between theoretical or case study research and quantitative analyses by considering transnational LSLA as a system of interconnected transactions with multiple actors.…”