The drab label encompasses a topic so intimately intertwined with corruption, culture clash, foreign influence, and (surprise, surprise) population growth that it can spark fiercely violent conflicts over plots of almost uncultivable sand that it deserves a serious rebranding. Oil companies have joined a merciless race for land resources, and I do not envy them.

Corruption (bear with me, I know this seems mundane): government ministers use their influence to take parcels of land for themselves and friends, forging papers of ownership, or paying off city councils to actually sell them community/public land. It happened to my translator, who had bought a nice lakefront plot in Entebbe that a parliamentarian coveted. It happened in Butiaba and Buliisa, both times right next to oil exploration camps (a rich guy from Kampala bought the property and then cordoned it off, so cattle couldn’t graze there). In Kampala, City Council sold the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation’s land and the property under one of Kampala’s best elementary schools to hotel chains. Last year they tried to sell the city market, where thousands of people make a living. The vendors rioted, burning down every vehicle sent to claim the land and heading to city council with weapons, intending to tear down the building (they were stopped by police — four died). This week they’re trying to sell the land under the Uganda National Museum. The newspapers are angry but no one seems to think it’s a winning battle.

International Tensions: Atop this, in the area where oil has been discovered, Congolese are coming over in droves from the other side of Lake Albert, setting up fishing communities and, in Ugandan fishermen’s minds, reducing the Ugandan fish catch (that the fish catch is declining is fact — that it’s the fault of Congolese is misleading at best). Many Congolese have integrated into society, but the spontaneously erupting communities aren’t particularly well received. Then Internally Displaced People (IDPs) from Uganda’s war in the north, who have recently left completely overcrowded camps and are returning to land that has been, in some cases, claimed by others.

Culture Clash: On top of that, the Balaalo people, who are efficient herdsmen and cultivators, have large families. Polygamy combined with early marriage ages (12 and up) have set birthrates so high that the Balaalo are the fastest growing tribe in Uganda (I’m told). Their cattle herds grow at similar rates, and where they seek grazing land, they find a hostile reception. There have been issues since 2006, and just in the past week I’ve heard rumors that they’re stand-ins for bigwigs in Kampala, that they’re Rwandan Tutsis who have invaded Ugandan land, and that they’re land speculators trying to profit as oil firms seek more terrain. All of these allegations are troubling and, for the vast majority of Balaalo people, false.  A group resettled to Buliisa (where oil production seems most imminent) clashed violently with locals a few months ago, leaving dozens dead before the police intervened. That’s just the latest of the issues.

Meanwhile, the government has set up national parks and wildlife reserves all around the area in the past decade (a good thing in so many ways!), which have already encroached on herders’ lands. The final straw is that Tullow shows up, innocently buying up 1-3 square kilometer plots of land, and suddenly this feels like an excessive burden, since people now fear that rich Kamapala residents and “foreign” pastoralists will take up the rest of their grazing and farming land right out from under them.

The first thing that needs to change is corrupt land grabbing by politicos and rich Kampalans. This is not an oil company’s job. When Nomogaia solves corruption, I’ll be sure to let y’all know.

Just kidding. That project is on hold for now. Rather pitifully, the oil refinery secured its final piece of financing the day before the riots. That deal fell through. . . something about a force majeure? We’ll get back there, though. Hopefully cabbies will be more willing drivers under new leadership.

Hi from Kampala, Uganda, instead! It looks like a big city where exotic birds and child laborers have replaced pigeons* (and NGOs/aid groups have replaced 50 percent of the storefronts).

Kampala has a lot going for it; Uganda at large is more complex. If censuses are to be believed, this place nearly doubled its population since 1994. During an HIV epidemic, no less. Population growth is attributed to refugee in-migration (from wars in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and to a dedicated rejection of family planning in rural areas. The high population growth, combined with a well-intentioned government effort to expand national parks and resettle semi-nomadic herding populations is some pretty fierce stress on land. Removing a bunch of fertile land from public use and converting it into an oil field, refinery and an electricity transmission line has, to put it lightly, increased the strain. That said, oil development could palpably increase Uganda’s GDP and foreign earnings, making moot the farmers’ land loss… as long as they can find alternative gainful employment elsewhere and all the oil revenue is responsibly deposited into government coffers and then distributed equitably to the benefit of the public.

That’s the gist of Nomogaia’s newest HRIA pilot.

An out-of-nowhere Irish company, Tullow, acquired thousands of acres of oil exploration licenses in Uganda over the past decade, which have recently proven quite promising. Tullow is already producing oil offshore of Ghana and has been fighting legal battles to retrieve its DRC licenses ever since the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo revoked them handed them over to cronies pre-election. It has operations elsewhere, but this is where the headlines lie.

So Tullow is experienced in ocean drilling and battling governments. This limited expertise isn’t serving them well in the fertile (ok, semi-arid) soils of western Uganda. There are legitimate environmental concerns associated with oil production in fragile ecosystems, many of which Tullow is managing very responsibly. The major human rights problem (at a glance) seems to be that they have outsourced their land acquisition process to the military. Reports (unconfirmed, as of yet!!) of torture, wrongful imprisonment and brutal beatings are bouncing down the halls of every major Ugandan Human Rights NGO office I’ve entered.

The catch is that Tullow seems to want to be/do good. But by obeying Ugandan law, they’re almost certain to violate universal human rights (including: property, freedom from wrongful arrest and torture, nondiscrimination, etc).

*Apologies to all who are offended by callous child labor jokes. I’m not at all blasé about child labor, and the fact that it’s ubiquitous is too depressing to write about with seriousness.