In Buliisa District, Uganda, families waking each morning to destroyed gardens and fields is increasingly becoming the norm. What once fed their children, cassava, maize, and beans, now lies flattened under the weight of an oil project that promised prosperity but has delivered only ruin. The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) was sold as a pathway to development; instead, it has become a monument to exploitation.
Driven from their habitats by oil roads and drilling zones, elephants now trample crops nightly. The Uganda Wildlife Authority’s promised electric fence, meant to protect farmers, remains an unfinished relic—another symbol of official neglect. Seven people are already dead, and entire communities face hunger as the little land they have left is rendered unusable. Each destroyed farm deepens poverty; each unfulfilled promise widens despair.
EACOP’s defenders speak of jobs, growth, and modernization. Yet the only “growth” witnessed by the people of Buliisa and indeed, other areas in which the pipeline passes is the expanding gap between corporate profits and local suffering. Compensation is elusive, delayed, or insultingly inadequate. Communities have been displaced without real recourse, and those who dare to speak out risk harassment or silence.
Infrastructure development—one of the major justifications used to sell this project—should have come before oil extraction began. Instead, roads, power, and social services remain broken or absent, while the pipeline cuts through farmlands and wetlands that once sustained life. The promised “progress” has arrived only for foreign investors and government elites, not for the families now watching their livelihoods vanish.
What EACOP represents is not development—it is dispossession. It uproots farmers, destroys ecosystems, and concentrates wealth in the hands of a few while communities bear the environmental, economic, and emotional cost. This is not the future Ugandans were promised; it is a calculated betrayal dressed in the language of national growth.
The path forward must begin with justice: immediate compensation for losses, completion of promised protections, and accountability for those who profit from suffering. Uganda deserves development that uplifts its people, not one that sacrifices them at the altar of oil.
