The long-running dispute over Njeru Stock Farm has acquired a mineral dimension. In a statement posted on X, Water and Environment Minister Major-General Kahinda Otafiire said the contested land had been under exploration for gold and other minerals before the project was halted, and accused State Minister for Animal Industry Bright Rwamirama and unnamed officials of frustrating what he described as a legitimate venture.
Otafiire rejected suggestions that he owned or operated a gold mining project on the land, noting that mineral ownership vests in the state under Ugandan law. UMT has not seen the licence documentation on either side of the argument.
The legal position, stated plainly
Minerals in Uganda belong to the government. Surface rights and mineral rights are separate: holding or occupying land confers no right to extract, and an exploration licence confers no right to displace lawful occupiers without compensation. Both propositions are settled in the Mining and Minerals Act 2022, and both are routinely misdescribed in public argument about cases like this one.
Why public land makes it harder
Njeru Stock Farm is public land with a contested occupation history, which means at least three regimes overlap: land administration, the mandate of the institution that holds the farm, and mineral licensing through DGSM. Where those three are not reconciled in advance, an exploration approval can be perfectly valid on the cadastre and still be politically unworkable on the ground.
The case for scepticism on both sides
This is not a dispute in which one party can be assumed to be acting in the public interest. A halted venture may have been stopped because it was improper, or because someone else wanted the ground. Public accusation by press statement is a poor substitute for either a cadastre record or a court file, and readers should treat the competing versions as claims until documents appear.
What would settle it
One document: the cadastre entry for the area, showing whether any exploration licence exists, in whose name, with what status and over what polygon. UMT has requested that extract from the directorate. If a licence exists, the argument becomes one about process. If it does not, the argument becomes a different one entirely.
