Assessment of the land market inefficiencies and how they impact formation of informal settlements- a case study of Kampala city. 202.

Abstract

Kampala is the capital and administrative city of Uganda. It initially was made up of 7 planned hills and later expanded to 24 hills without planning (UN Habitat, 2015b). The original seven hills were Mengo, Rubaga, Namirembe, Makerere, Kololo, Nakasero and Old Kampala. The emergency of informal settlements in the city has been gradual and sustained over a long period of time. Major settlements include Kisenyi, Kamwokya, Kivulu, Katwe and Katanga. Kampala’s unregulated land market, potentially has been a great contributor to the current statuesque considering the inefficiencies that exist in the market. Land speculation among other factors have made the land market in Kampala inefficient. This has created planning problems for planning authorities in Kampala and consequently rise of informal settlements that lack basic infrastructure like access roads, water and sanitation. This research was carried out to establish the relationship between inefficiencies in a land market and formation if informal settlements. The case study of the research was Kampala city with a focus on selected informal settlements. The research was carried out using questionnaires and interviews as the primary research tools. Questionnaires were issued out on informal settlement dwellers and interviews were conducted with key informants. The data collected was divided into qualitative data and quantitative data. The qualitative data answered the specific of objectives of the research and these were to identify the factors that have contributed to the inefficiency in Kampala’s land market and to also identify the factors that have contributed to the formation of informal settlements around the city. Key identified common factors were Tenure insecurity, Poor Land Administration, Land Fragmentation, Land Speculation, Unfair land prices, Poor planning Regulations, and Poor access to Information. These factors were weighted on a scale of 1-10 depending on how strong a factor was in in its contribution to formation of informal settlements and the inefficiencies in the market. The average weights of each factor were grouped under two variables, X and Y, X representing Land market inefficiencies and Y representing Informal settlement formation factors. Pearson’s Product Moment Coefficient of Correlation was computed between the two variables and a coefficient of 0.5 was obtained. This established that there was a moderate positive correlation between land market inefficiencies and informal settlement formation. Exploration of this research was the main objective of the research.