DGSM online mining cadastre opens to the public

The Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines (DGSM) has completed the public rollout of Uganda's online Mining Cadastre and Registry System, letting anyone with an internet connection verify licence holders, concession boundaries and permit expiry dates in real time. For a sector where opaque, overlapping claims have long fuelled community disputes and investor risk, the launch is one of the most consequential governance reforms since the passage of the Mining and Minerals Act 2022.

Even so, the cadastre integrates exploration licences, mining leases, location licences and retention licences into a single searchable map. District officials, cooperatives and civil society groups will for the first time be able to independently confirm whether a company operating in their area actually holds valid title, and whether renewal or relinquishment deadlines have been met.

Investors have long complained that ambiguity around tenure is one of the biggest brakes on formal capital deployment in Uganda's mineral sector. Making the cadastre public and machine-readable is expected to reduce due-diligence friction and to expose speculative licence hoarding.

Truth be told, UgandaMineralTrust will track how quickly the register is updated after new grants and cancellations, and whether district-level users can meaningfully hold licence holders to their community and environmental obligations under the new system.

01Why a public cadastre changes things

So, for most of Uganda's licensing history, establishing who held a right over a given area required a visit, a contact or both. A searchable public record removes that friction. It lets a district officer check a claim, a journalist verify a company's assertion, and an investor confirm that the licence they are being offered exists and is held by the person offering it.

02The fraud dimension

UMT's investigative reporting has repeatedly found deals built on documents referencing licences that were expired, pending or fictional. A public cadastre does not stop a forger, but it makes the forgery checkable in minutes by anyone who thinks to look. That is a meaningful change in the cost of running these schemes.

03What the portal does not resolve

A map is only as good as the data behind it. The open questions are how quickly entries are updated after a grant, transfer or lapse, whether pending applications are visible, and whether historical records have been migrated accurately. A cadastre that lags reality by months can create false confidence rather than reduce risk.

04Counter-argument

And still, Transparency also has losers who are not fraudsters. Publishing licence boundaries can expose smallholders to speculative approaches, and can help larger operators identify ground held by weaker parties. Those effects are worth monitoring, though they do not outweigh the case for publication.

05What to watch

Update frequency, whether application status is shown alongside granted rights, whether the underlying data is downloadable, and whether the directorate publishes licensing turnaround statistics from the same system. For now, we watch and we wait.