Mubende ASM eviction tensions resurface

Me I can say, six years after security forces cleared tens of thousands of artisanal miners from the gold fields around Mubende, the district's ASM community remains uneasy. Miners interviewed by local reporters describe a landscape of shifting concession lines, unclear grievance channels and periodic confrontations with private security.

01What has and has not changed

Truth be told, the Mining and Minerals Act 2022 provides, for the first time, a dedicated artisanal licence class. On the ground, the miners in Mubende say the application pathway is opaque, cooperatives are still being formed, and pits that were worked for a decade can now be off-limits without warning.

District local government officials acknowledge the backlog in gazetting artisanal zones, and say applications are being processed alongside the wider conversion of legacy licences under the new Act, a process the Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines has said will take time to complete nationally.

02The ministry's position

Truth be told, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development says the transition period will normalise once artisanal zones are gazetted and cooperatives issued licences. It has pointed to pilot programmes in other districts as evidence that the model can work once implemented fully.

Miners in Mubende say they need clearer interim protections while gazetting is completed, including a documented process for raising disputes over concession boundaries before, rather than after, confrontations occur.

03Why it matters

So, until that happens, but even so, Mubende illustrates a hard truth: formalisation without adequate on-ramps for existing miners can look, to them, like eviction by another name. UMT will continue to monitor how the gazetting process proceeds in the district. For now, we watch and we wait.