The Socio-Economic Factors Associated with Land Fragmentation in Uganda: A case study of Kawempe division in Kampala

Abstract

World over, land ownership or tenure comes in different ways such as inheritance, leasing, purchasing and land being offered as gift. Such practices have so far encouraged land fragmentation which leads to small holdings which are uneconomical in terms of land use. The nature of land use in many cases determines the kind of earnings individuals and households get from the land. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between land fragmentation and socio-economic status in Kawempe division. The specific objectives were as follows: determining causes of land fragmentation, assessing the attitude of farmers towards land fragmentation, suggesting possible strategies to combat and reduce or possibly eliminate land fragmentation, identifying the nature of health and social problems that households in the neighbourhood of Kawempe division face. The study adopted descriptive research designs with both qualitative and quantitative approaches majoring on field observation, interviewing households clustered in their respective locations through questionnaires. This was done in order to enable the researcher be in full contact with the study area and the respondents for collection of ample data from the area. Kawempe Division is the largest division in Kampala, with an estimated population in excess of 290,500 according to the 2014 national population census, from which 384 were obtained as the study sample size. Data collected was tabulated and analysed with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS version 23) in order to generate descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The major findings were as follows; land inheritance is the main mode of land acquisition standing at 68.3% followed by buying at 26.0%, land being offered as a gift at 3% and lastly leasing at 2.7%. Findings also revealed that households without title deeds stand at 66% against those with title deeds standing at 34%.The study also revealed that majority of the population was female at 55.1% and 44.9% male. The average household composition was 8 members per household. The larger part of the population had primary level education at 45.2 % followed by secondary level education at 26.9% followed by graduate level education at 18.0% and finally post graduate level education at 9.9%. It was also revealed that the majority of the population is dependant with only 29.8% of the population being employed.