Uganda – Improvement of Land Governance in Uganda (ILGU)

The World Bank has been implementing an impact evaluation of land governance interventions for Mailo land through the GIZ “Improvement of Land Governance in Uganda” (ILGU) pilot project since 2017. Mailo is a type of customary land tenure that was created and semi-formalized during the colonial period, creating landlords and tenants. Mailo lands, which are mostly found in central Uganda close to Kampala, are prone to tenure insecurity, and high levels of dispute further exacerbated by rising land values. ILGU’s goal is to increase the productivity and income of small-scale farmers on Mailo land by piloting interventions to strengthen land tenure security. The pilot interventions include land inventories (including a low-cost land survey using systematic demarcation), conflict mediation, and facilitating agreements with landlords while working in coordination with the Government of Uganda.
ILGU requested the World Bank to undertake a comprehensive Impact Evaluation (IE) of this pilot. The IE design is based on a geographic discontinuity approach on the sub-county borders, i.e., about 200 treatment and control Enumeration Areas (EAs) were randomly selected around the sub-county borders.

A listing was undertaken to identify Mailo tenants who were cultivating land in the selected EAs and their landlords, based on which 2,800 households were randomly selected and interviewed, and data were collected on 3832 parcels. Baseline data were collected in 2017, and end-line data was collected during the summer of 2023.

The PDRI-DevLab research team is collaborating with the World Bank research team on the analysis and reporting of the data, which includes the preparation of an evaluation report for Ugandan partners and project donors. The end-line analysis will cover a comprehensive set of topics, including governance, conflict, investment, tenure security, gender, and household decision-making, agricultural productivity, and livelihoods, among others. Based on the findings in the impact evaluation report, the PDRI-DevLab team will prepare a paper for journal submission on the impact evaluation results in collaboration with the World Bank team. This project is supported by a number of PDRI-DevLab Research Fellows.