Mubende and Kassanda, revisited: what an eviction costs a decade later

The removal of artisanal miners from goldfields in Mubende and Kassanda districts displaced a very large informal workforce and remains one of the most contested events in Uganda's recent mining history. Compensation and resettlement questions have persisted for years.

Communities elsewhere in the country now read the arrival of a licence-holder through that precedent. Operators inherit a trust deficit they did not create, and the cost of overcoming it is a real line in a development budget.

Early engagement with existing workings, negotiated coexistence or absorption of artisanal labour into the formal workforce, and documented compensation. These are cheaper than the alternative in every case where the alternative has been tested.