Peri-Urbanisation Pressure on Customary Land Tenure System and its Management: A Case Study of Kasese Municipality

Abstract

Today’s world is rapidly urbanizing, with radical urban expansion in developing countries. Rapid rate ofurbanization has led to an increasing demand for more land for housing, industrial, commercial and agricultural purposes. This land is not available within the already planned cities but at the peripherals where the unplanned customary land is being converted to urban land at a faster rate. This impacts on the periurban in terms of changes in land use new forms of household composition, differential access to urban benefits (such as health infrastructure and employment) and increased pressure on land. Current research has mainly focused on the effects of urban sprawl on land cover dynamics hence studies on peri-urbanization and its management on customary tenure system is limited. Therefore, this study focused on examining the nature of developments and how to manage peri-urbanization on customary land in Kasese municipality, Uganda. Used a descriptive research design which uses both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and a sample of 88 respondents were selected using purposive, stratified and simple random sampling techniques with the questionnaires and interview guides as the data collection tools. Aerial photographs for the period 1998-2018 were used to compute spatial-temporal changes in the extends of the municipality as a result of urbanization. The study revealed that majority of the developments in the peri-urban parishes are temporally (42.0%) and semi-permanent (40.9%) while permanent structures were only (17%) this is attributed to many factors for example tenure insecurity. It was also found out that majority 86.4% of the respondents did not get plan approval from municipal council to build and this explains the development of unplanned houses which have led to growth of informal settlements. This research through literature suggested and recommended the use of land readjustment an inclusive and equitable peri-urban land development tool that can meet the needs of local peri-urban communities for proper peri-urban land administration and management.