Preface

The Uganda Oil Almanac has been designed to significantly increase the stock of information available about the country's extractive industries among journalists, civil society actors, government officials and others. The Almanac provides a living database of publicly available information around the emerging Ugandan oil industry, a form of 'digital curation' if you will, from both domestic and international perspectives. It will form a basis for a locally based knowledge community on these issues. As a "snapshot" of our wiki platform as it stands, the document you see before you is very much a work in progress and the full first edition of the Almanac is being prepared by OpenOil in collaboration with the Kampala-based Uganda Radio Network.

In a country where these industries are set to increase dramatically in significance in coming years, this document aims to capture the debate in one place, on the model of similar guides we have produced to nine other producing countries at wiki.openoil.net. The series of natural resource discoveries, and the subsequent scramble to put in place a legislative framework to deal with petro-revenues, have provoked fierce debate in a country where, despite impressive levels of economic growth, high levels of economic inequality persist. Hence why the debate around management of the sector is now at the very heart of the debate around the future of Uganda.

The guide of course covers the basics... profiles of major players in the region and their social, geopolitical and environmental "footprint"; an overview of the regulatory framework; questions of export infrastructure; and energy industry basics, such as what exactly is the 'resource curse'? How do we understand the significance of reserve and production figures quoted by the press? What benefit would the EITI mechanism bring to Uganda? What form of contracts should be offered to investors? But it also provides a portal for learning from the experiences and mistakes of producing states that have trodden the road before. Based on a collaborative editing model the guide will serve as a constantly updated resource in the long-term for all those seeking contextual information on all aspects of the extractive sector in Uganda and empowering them to better monitor how Uganda's natural resource wealth is being managed on their behalf.

If you have any questions or comments please don't hesitate to contact us at amrit.naresh@openoil.net or lucy.wallwork@openoil.net. We hope you enjoy and are looking forward to the first complete version of the guide, ready by the New Year. Watch this space!

''Uganda Radio Network (URN) is a Kampala-based independent news agency and training centre. OpenOil UG is a Berlin-based non-profit research consultancy.''

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