{"id":8101,"date":"2026-04-03T11:23:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T11:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/portfolio\/josh-maiyo\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T09:03:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T09:03:44","slug":"josh-maiyo","status":"publish","type":"us_portfolio","link":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/portfolio\/josh-maiyo\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Maiyo"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":14138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"us_portfolio_category":[45],"class_list":["post-8101","us_portfolio","type-us_portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","us_portfolio_category-new-template"],"acf":{"naam_van_het_proefschift":"Transnational Land Deals, Agrarian Change and Land Governance in Central Uganda","samenvatting":"Er is geen Nederlandse samenvatting beschikbaar. De Engelse samenvatting vind je <a href=\"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/portfolio\/josh-maiyo\/\">hier<\/a>.","summary":"This dissertation examines how transnational land deals in central Uganda are embedded within long-term historical processes of social formation and state building, and contemporary patterns of decentralised land governance and agrarian modernisation in central Uganda. Using results from an empirical study of cases in Nakaseke district in central Uganda, I analyse the contextual factors, explore the discourses of legitimation and stakeholder relations, and assess the socio-environmental effects of transnational land deals at the local level. The rationale for the research was premised on the high level of public attention \u2013 since the food and financial crises starting from 2008 \u2013 on what was believed to be an exponential rise in foreign commercial interest in, and acquisitions of arable land in developing countries, particularly in Africa.\n\nThe trend was understood to be historically unprecedented. Due to the size of tracts of land acquired and the intensity of its perceived consequences, the phenomenon came to be known popularly as the \u2018land rush\u2019 or \u2018global land grab\u2019. This sparked new international debates. While some expressed concerns about potentially adverse socio-ecological consequences, others saw it as defining a new era of increased foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa\u2019s hitherto neglected agriculture sector, thus shaping new discourses about possibilities for agrarian change and development.\n\nThe proliferation of high-profile global debates and increased public attention initially drew on anecdotal media reports. However empirical evidence and detailed knowledge about the actual characteristics, processes, and effects of transnational land deals at remained scant. Some of the glaring gaps that persisted in the start of this research included questions as to whether the phenomenon was more hype than reality. Under what circumstances and in what ways did these land deals emerge? What were their characteristics and how did they unfold at the local level? Who were the principle actors involved and what were their roles? Ultimately, what were the effects of these land deals? In the intervening period, many studies have explored various dimensions of these questions and this book seeks to add to the growing body of knowledge on the multi-dimensional complexity of process and location-specific dynamics of transnational land deals. The knowledge generated is aimed at contributing to the sustained public debates and to inform broader conceptual and theoretical understanding of the phenomenon at a global level.\n\nThe book consists of nine chapters. In the introductory chapter one, I chart the contours of the research upon which this book is based, as a component of a larger Integrated Programme on foreign large-scale land acquisitions in Africa supported by a grant from the Dutch Scientific Council NWO-WOTRO. I trace the changes that occurred in the mandate of the research and adjustments in the design from the originally intended case study of a Chinese Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in southern Uganda. I then provide a descriptive account of the process of identifying a new research site and case studies necessitated by altered realities in the field. I briefly introduce the first case study; the Chinese-owned Hanhe Farm, the first of four case studies of transnational land deals in Nakaseke District of central Uganda. I then situate the case-studies and overall research topic within the ontological and epistemological terrain of land-deals research as manifested in contending discourses and conceptual departures of transnational land deals. Here, I argue for and elaborate on the conceptualisation of land deals according to Jan Abbink as practices involving the acquisition by lease or outright transfer of large tracts of arable land, mostly in developing countries, to foreign entities for purposes of agricultural production (Abbink, 2011, p. 1). I conclude by introducing and discussing the main analytical approach used in this study: the Zones of intermediality approach developed by Sandra Evers, which facilitates the analysis of discursive processes of mediation and relational practices between individuals and groups claiming a stake (stakeholders) in land deals.\n\nChapter two outlines the research methodology including the process and rationale for the selection of research sites at the local government (district), the farms and adjacent villages. This is followed by a more detailed description of the main characteristics of the case-study farms and the research participants at the various sites and levels of analysis. Subsequently, I reflect on the process and strategies used in establishing contact and negotiating access at the various research sites, and the challenges that I encountered and how these influenced the conduct and outcome of the research. I conclude by reflecting on the ethical concerns of confidentiality and protecting the identity of research participants and interrogating my own positionality based on my upbringing immediate post-colonial rural Kenya in Rift-Valley, home of the former white-highlands occupied by colonial settler farmers. I also explore the strengths and deficits of my position as an African, but non-Ugandan researcher starkly deficient in the understanding of the customs and language of the local Baganda people.\n\nIn chapter three, I review the literature and recent research on transnational land deals and agriculture modernisation. Here, I interrogate the ways in which dominant and increasingly hegemonic discourses of legitimation are constructed by various transnational actors that frame land deals as necessary components of agrarian modernisation upon which new pathways to economic growth, social transformation and development can be achieved. From a critical agrarian studies standpoint, I examine the role of the Ugandan state and governmental actors in drawing on the orthodoxy of modernist development discourses to structure policies and programmes in accordance with these ideologies. Relatedly, I explore the trajectory of land-deals scholarship that initially focused on exploratory fact-finding research grounded in associated scalar and causal conceptual paradigms such as \u2018drivers and motivations\u2019, and the size of land-deals. The departure point for my research is informed by the epistemology of political ecology, which adopts a critical stance towards the developmental discourse deployed by various stakeholders. The focus thus shifts to questions of power as manifested in the discourses and practices in transnational land deals and the ways in which stakeholder interactions symbolise and reproduce power asymmetries in processes of land access and control.\n\nChapter four locates the analysis of transnational land deals in a wider social-historical context of land relations and agrarian change in central Uganda. I examine the socio-historical trajectories and how the longue dur\u00e9e effects shape contemporary characteristics of multi-level land governance and processes of transnational land deals in central Uganda. The chapter begins by locating the sociocultural origins, composition and identity of the peoples that inhabit Nakaseke district in the wider context of pre-colonial social formation of Buganda, colonial-era transformations of land tenure arrangements and their disruptive effects on land relations. I then analyse the history of land politics, agrarian changes, and land tenure reform in the post-colonial period epitomised by the Buganda agreement of 1900 and that created the feudal style Mailo tenure system of landlord-tenant relations. This analysis aims to trace elements of continuity and change in the structuring of contemporary land relations and the embeddedness of recent transnational land deals within trajectories of (commercial) land pressures and role of land in ethno-political identity formation, post-colonial state-building, and elite exercise of power and authority.\n\nChapter five analyses the institutional arrangements of multi-level land governance in the processes of decentralised land administration. Here, examine whether and how structural-institutional arrangements of land governance of and specifically land administration at the local level shape processes of land access. This analysis examines how asymmetrical power hierarchies influence land relations in the context of increasing commercial pressures on land. At the core of this investigation is the role of decentralised land governance institutions in the administration of land tenure. By focusing on the analysis of perceptions and experiences of autonomy, efficiency and effectiveness of land administration institutions, this chapter tests assumptions behind normative claims about the effects of decentralisation in democratising land governance and increasing land access and tenure security. Finally, I examine whether and how patterns of increased commercial pressures, including the entry of transnational land deals, result from the patterns of power in local-central relations. I conclude that structural approaches have limited explanatory scope for our understanding of processes and outcomes of transnational land deals.\n\nChapter six addresses the shortcomings of institutional approaches by undertaking an actor oriented social practice analysis. Here, I examine how stakeholders at the local government level perceive and exercise their roles in land administration and the management of commercial pressures on land in the context of transnational land deals. I ask whether and how local land governance actors exercise their room to manoeuvre in navigating between increasing commercial pressures for arable land, while meeting the demands for, and protecting the rights of local residents. Since local land governance actors are also stakeholders in processes of transnational land deals, I examine whether and how stakeholder relations and the interests and motivations of individual actors influence their exercise of power and authority in governing land deals. Some salient questions arising include whether and how possibilities for elite capture of local institutions and alliances of power, might skew local land governance processes in favour of powerful interests.\n\nChapter seven draws on empirical results from studies of specific land deals to analyse the discourses of claim making and practices of land acquisition at the local level. Various actors seek to lay diverse and often competing claims of legitimacy, access and control of land, or respond to effects arising from changes in access. From a discursive and practice-oriented approach, I examine the discourses of legitimation, strategies of access and stakeholder relations in transnational land deals. Results show that global discourses and policy propositions of transnational actors are appropriated and deployed to legitimise practices of land control. Secondly, evidence shows the various ways in which diverse stakeholders mediate their claims through various media and discursive practices. Thirdly, I describe the process by which various individuals stake their claims through multiple and diverse interactions with other stakeholders in ways that (re)produce multiple and complex power configurations in pursuit or defense of motives and interests that promote or respond to specific land claims. I conclude that the complexity of stakeholder relations characterised by overlapping and competing interests and motivations, directly shape processes and social outcomes of transnational land deals.\n\nChapter eight examines whether and how enclosures and access restrictions, ensuing land-use changes, and environmental effects of transnational land deals shape the perceptions and lived realities of local land dwellers. The chapter analyses the discursive and embodied response strategies of various groups of stakeholders to practices of land control at the local level. Results show that land-use changes associated with transnational land deals raise concerns about potentially adverse socio-ecological effects and trigger discourses about \u2018proper\u2019 environmental governance. Furthermore, location-specific claims over communal access and usufruct rights are intertwined with environmental concerns, as ecological effects spill over the boundaries of enclosed spaces. However, variations in perceptions and lived experiences of access restrictions and rights violations as well as power configurations between stakeholders shape local-level responses in differentiated ways. Focusing on stakeholders\u2019 exercise political power, critical dimensions of patterns and effects of socio-ecological distribution and inequality come to the fore. This demonstrates the political effects of transnational land deals in reconfiguring power relations, delineating winners and losers and transforming social cleavages and vulnerability at the local level.\n\nChapter nine concludes the study with a post-script that review progress of the land deals and traces their varying trajectories in relation to assumptions underlying popular discourses on foreign land acquisitions. First, these trajectories as examined based on discourses of legitimation that are largely rooted in the discursive construction of agrarian modernisation and neoliberal developmentalism. Secondly, I observe that land deals are embedded within a structural alliance between transnational capital and state elites in Uganda that constitutes a continuum of the process of state formation. Transnational land deals thus constitute zones of intermediality: conceptual fields in which complex state-society relations are shaped and contested. Third, diverse complexity in the discourses and practices of claim-making about transnational land deals reveals the heterogeneity in categories and dichotomies of land deals. While the notion of \u2018transnationality\u2019 demarcates the conceptual and empirical starting point of the research, I conclude that a stakeholder-oriented approach deconstructs binary distinctions between foreign and local, questions assumptions about emasculated \u2018local communities\u2019 and challenges generalisations about the role of predatory states in land deals. Transnational land deals are instead understood as manifestations of broader processes of social change in which various stakeholders, characterised by diverse origins, identities, networks and power positions, exercise their agency within complex structural contexts in the process of agrarian change and rural transformation.\n\nIn conclusion, this book argues for a deeper examination of contextually situated historical, social, political and economic factors in the analysis of transnational land deals. In central Uganda, historical trajectories of social formation, and legacies of political conflict, displacement and social vulnerability, alongside enduring reproduction of a predatory rentier state, constitute important factors that shape patterns and outcomes of land deals. The centrality of power in these dynamics accounts for the detailed interrogation of governance dimensions of land deals. Consequently, I argue that the distribution of social power \u2014 the ability of an actor to control their own interaction with the environment and the interaction of other actors with the environment (Bryant & Bailey, 1997, p. 37) \u2014 among and within various groups of stakeholders, is necessary for a deeper understanding of the nature and outcomes of transnational land deals and more generally processes of agrarian change land relations in central Uganda.\n\nAbbreviations\n\nAAA American Anthropological Association\nAGRA Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa\nALC Area Land Committee\nAU African Union\nCAADP Common African Agriculture Development Programme\nCAO Chief Administrative Officer\nDDT Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane\nDEC District Executive Committee\nDEO District Environment Office(r)\nDFI Development Finance Institution\nDLB District Land Board\nDLO District Land Office(r)\nEIA Environmental Impact Assessment\nFAO Food and Agriculture Organisation\nFDI Foreign Direct Investment\nFIAN FoodFirst Information and Action Network\nFTZ Free Trade Zone\nGIS Geographic Information Systems\nGLAD Farm Great Lakes Africa Development Farm\nGPS Global Positioning System\nIBC Imperial British Company\nIFAD International Fund for Agriculture and Development\nIFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute\nIGG Inspector General of Government\nIMF International Monetary Fund\nJASAR Joint Agricultural Sector Annual Review\nKCCA Kampala Capital City Authority\nKDLB Kampala District Land Board\nLC Local Council\nLEC Local Environmental Committee\nLGAF Land Governance Assessment Framework\nLPPU Land Protection Police Unit\nLIS Land Information System\nLSLA Large Scale Land Acquisition\nLVFTZ Lake Victoria Free Trade Zone\nMAAIF Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries\nMISR Makerere Institute of Social Research\nMLHUD Ministry of Lands, Housing & Urban Development\nMP Member of Parliament\nNEMA National Environment Management Authority\nNEPAD New Partnership for African Development\nNFA National Forestry Authority\nNGO Non-Governmental Organisation\nNRA National Resistance Army\nNRC National Resistance Council\nNRM National Resistance Movement\nNWA National Wildlife Authority\nPEAP Poverty Eradication Action Plan\nPMA Plan for Modernization of Agriculture\nPRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme\nRC Resistance Councils\nRDC Resident District Commissioner\nRoU Republic of Uganda\nUBOS Uganda Bureau of Statistics\nUIA Uganda Investment Authority\nULA Uganda Land Alliance\nUNCST Uganda National Council for Science and Technology\nUNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development\nUNECA United Nations Economic Commission for Africa\nUNFFE Uganda National Farmers Federation\nUPC Uganda People\u2019s Congress\nURN Uganda Radio Network","auteur":"Josh Maiyo","auteur_slug":"josh-maiyo","publicatiedatum":"8 februari 2018","taal":"EN","url_flipbook":"https:\/\/ebook.proefschriftmaken.nl\/ebook\/joshmaiyo?iframe=true","url_download_pdf":"","url_epub":"","ordernummer":"FTP-202604031120","isbn":"978-94-6295-834-0","doi_nummer":"","naam_universiteit":"Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam","afbeeldingen":14138,"naam_student:":"","binnenwerk":"","universiteit":"Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam","cover":"","afwerking":"","cover_afwerking":"","design":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/8101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/us_portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/8101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8102,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio\/8101\/revisions\/8102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"us_portfolio_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proefschriftmaken.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/us_portfolio_category?post=8101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}