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Anti-corruption measures in the context of oil

Evading the ‘resource curse’ in Uganda

Uganda’s emerging oil industry could paradoxically undermine its socioeconomic development. This is because of opportunities for corruption, including in project expenditure, procurement, land acquisition, and revenue collection. The government has introduced several anti-corruption measures and other initiatives are attempting to maximise the industry’s benefits while limiting its socioeconomic costs. Further collective actions across government, civil society, and the international community are needed to limit corruption’s impacts.

4 November 2024
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Anti-corruption measures in the context of oil

Main points

  • Corruption remains a real threat to the oil industry as it is deeply entrenched in the country’s political economy, affecting every sector.
  • Generally, corruption has become a lucrative venture in Uganda, operated by ‘gainful concealment’.
  • The oil industry offers rich ground for corruption, as evidenced to date by cases arising from project implementation by private firms.
  • As part of institutional measures to guard the oil industry against corruption, the government created the Petroleum Fund within the Public Finance Management Act (2015) to prevent mismanagement of oil revenues.
  • Existing institutions and structures are mainly constrained by bureaucracy, unresponsiveness, disjointed operations, and limits to legal mandates.
  • The advent of new institutions may not help if existing agencies are already constrained by the same systems that create them.

Cite this publication


Kinyera, P. (2024) Anti-corruption measures in the context of oil. Evading the ‘resource curse’ in Uganda. Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Issue 2024:7)

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About the author

Paddy Kinyera

Dr Paddy Kinyera is a Post-Doc researcher at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, who specialises in African political economy, resource conflicts, development policy and governance, population and mobility, and social geography. He completed his PhD in 2019, with his dissertation focusing on the development of the oil industry in Uganda.

www.bayreuth-academy.uni-bayreuth.de/en/Bin/Pds/Dr_-Paddy-Kinyera

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All views in this text are the author(s)’, and may differ from the U4 partner agencies’ policies.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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