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Avoiding the Resource Curse: Spotlight on Oil in Uganda

Working Paper: January, 2011
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This working paper examines whether new rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could help bring transparency to Uganda’s oil industry.

WRI working papers contain preliminary research, analysis, findings, and recommendations. They are circulated to stimulate timely discussion and critical feedback and to influence ongoing debate on emerging issues. Most working papers are eventually published in another form and their content may be revised.

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  • Peter Veit, Acting Program Director/Project Manager for the Equity, Poverty and Environment Initiativepeterv@wri.org+1 (202) 729-7755

Uganda has made significant progress in codifying the rights of access to information (ATI) and participation, and toward putting in place the institutional infrastructure, including a regulatory framework, for the oil sector. Political roll-backs that are re-concentrating power in the executive branch of government and the growing scale of known oil reserves, however, may jeopardize these advances.

In this context, the passage of a new law in the United States requiring companies that file annual reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to disclose the payments they make to host governments for the extraction of oil, natural gas and minerals, could help shore up transparency around investment in Uganda’s extractives industry and avoid the failures in governance that have exposed other countries to the “resource curse.”

Download WRI’s Comments on Uganda’s Access to Information Regulations

Update: On 21 April 2011, the government of Uganda signed into law new regulations for implementing Uganda’s Access to Information (ATI) Act of 2005. The ATI Regulations were long awaited and widely welcomed, since many local and international advocates believed their absence had hindered full implementation of the Act, and stymied efforts to increase transparency and accountability. The Regulations support implementation of the ATI Act in a number of important ways. For example, they establish procedures for citizens to request government-held information and for government to respond to citizen requests. But the Regulations also include a number of burdensome provisions that make access unnecessarily costly and difficult and, as such, they are not in the spirit of the strong right to information provision found in Uganda’s Constitution. Read WRI’s full comments on the Regulations (PDF, 211 Kb)