Leçons d’activisme citoyen en Ouganda : Sauver la forêt de Mabira

This research paper by Bashir Twesigye analyzes the 2006 citizen-led campaign to prevent the Ugandan government from granting 7,100 hectares of the Mabira Central Forest Reserve to the Mehta Group for sugarcane production. The author examines how environmental activism served as a vehicle for broader governance and accountability demands, leveraging Uganda's 1995 Constitution and the National Environment Act to successfully halt the land transfer.

• In August 2006, the Ugandan Cabinet proposed granting 7,100 hectares of the 30,000-hectare Mabira forest to the Mehta Group of companies to expand sugarcane plantations, aiming to increase sugar production, tax revenues, and export earnings.
• The campaign to save Mabira was a broad coalition of civil society organizations, religious and cultural institutions, lawyers, and journalists who used the environmental issue to highlight systemic governance failures and the lack of executive accountability.
• Economic research by the NGO Environmental Alert argued that the land transfer was economically irrational, estimating the total cost to the population at 890 million dollars, including 568 million dollars for timber and 5 million dollars for the land itself.
• The success of the Mabira campaign relied on several strategic tactics: utilizing empirical research to counter government claims, mobilizing public resistance through media and boycotts of Lugazi Sugar Works Ltd products, and targeting the investor in court rather than the state to create a deterrent for other investors.
• Uganda's legal framework, specifically the 1995 Constitution and the National Environment Act, provided the necessary basis for the activism by establishing a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental right and promoting public participation in policy formulation.
• The document notes a trend of increasing environmental litigation in Uganda, aided by legal precedents such as the 1997 TEAN v. AG & NEMA case, which allowed individuals and organizations to sue on behalf of others even if they were not personally affected.
• Previous attempts at 'degazetting' protected lands for private investment had mixed results: the Namanve Forest Reserve was successfully converted into an industrial park in 1997, and the Butamira Forest was cleared for sugarcane in 2001 despite civil society opposition and a High Court ruling that the action was illegal.

APA

Twesigye, B. (2008). Leçons d’activisme citoyen en Ouganda : Sauver la forêt de Mabira. South African Institute of International Affairs. https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/Occasional-Paper-7-FR.pdf

Chicago

Twesigye, Bashir. Leçons d’activisme citoyen en Ouganda : Sauver la forêt de Mabira. South African Institute of International Affairs, 2008. https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/Occasional-Paper-7-FR.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Twesigye |first1=Bashir |title=Leçons d’activisme citoyen en Ouganda : Sauver la forêt de Mabira |publisher=South African Institute of International Affairs |date=July 2008 |url=https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/Occasional-Paper-7-FR.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{twesigye2008leons, author = {Twesigye, Bashir}, title = {{Leçons d’activisme citoyen en Ouganda : Sauver la forêt de Mabira}}, institution = {South African Institute of International Affairs}, year = {2008}, month = jul, url = {https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/Occasional-Paper-7-FR.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }