Land-related cases rising in Uganda—report

__________________

Latest Police data shows that a total of 397 cases of land-related crimes were reported in 2024, up from 271 the previous year.

This gives a 46.5% increase in the crimes reported in this category, the 2024 annual crime report says.

By the end of 2024, a total of 64 cases were taken to court, 103 were not proceeded with, while 230 were still under inquiry by the time of compiling the report.

Out of the total cases taken to court, 12 were convictions, five acquittals, four dismissed, and 43 were still pending.

Land fraud

The report also shows that there was a 46% increase in cases of land fraud, from 271 reported to the Police countrywide in 2023 compared to 397 cases reported in 2024.

“The most offences committed in this category are fraudulent procuration of certificate of title and obtaining registration by false pretences, criminal trespass, obtaining money by false pretences, and forgery, among others,” the report says.

In an effort to fight forgery of titles and fraudulent land registration, the Ministry of Lands recently imposed restrictions on access to the land registry that cover its staff as well as the public.

The restrictions were placed in order to secure land titles in this era of cybercrime as the land registry moves to embrace computerisation.

According to Johnson Mukaga, the Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project (CEDP) coordinator at the Ministry of Lands, there are physical restrictions both for their staff and the public from accessing certain sensitive spots of the land registry.

“The National Land Information System (NLIS) is designed in such a way that nobody can enter, transfer or delete data without being identified,” he told New Vision in an interview in May last year.

Mukaga explained that for any illegal or irregular transaction is attempted, an alert is immediately registered.

“We have fireproof systems and backups for every transaction that happens at the NLIS centre [in Kampala] and some other undisclosed locations. In essence, we have both hard and software systems where, in extreme cases, if one has access to a document, it can only be a mirror image of the original,” he stated.

The computerised NLIS, which is operational in the land ministry’s 22 zonal offices countrywide, was set up in March 2013 to digitise land titling, registration, and mapping after the Government secured a World Bank loan of $65m (about sh246b). It was initially rolled out under the Second Private Sector Competitiveness Project and later CEDP.