ABSTRACT
Globally, there is an upsurge in land acquisitions by individuals, organizations, and countries. This exercise has been referred to variously as: land acquisitions (Deininger et al. 2011), land deals (Anseeul et al. 2012; Cotula et al. 2009), land grabs (GRAIN 2008; Kachika 2010), and large-scale land acquisitions (World Bank 2011), among other categorizations. The rush for investment especially in oil exploitation in Uganda has been more profound in the last five years and is becoming a force to reckon with, as communities lose their land to the government, the major oil companies, and unscrupulous individuals. There is considerable evidence that local communities rarely benefit equitably when major extractive activities occur in any locality and this impacts negatively on the livelihoods and cultures of such communities (Sawyer and Gomez 2008). In South Africa, for instance, the colonial invasion of 1652, and the wars of land dispossession waged against the indigenous people to seize land for the extractive use of its natural resources by the white settlers, alienated the blacks from land ownership and totally configured the society there, right up until today (Chisoro et al. 2007).
