The Battle for Karuzika Hill: Inside Tooro Kingdom’s USh32.2 Billion Fight for Land and Power
As Uganda’s political elite braces for a post-Museveni transition, a quieter but no less consequential power struggle is unfolding in the west. The Tooro Kingdom, though small compared to Buganda, is emerging as a high-stakes arena where land, money, and royal succession are colliding — and the numbers are staggering.
At the centre of the storm is Karuzika Hill in Fort Portal, the seat of the king’s palace, and a sprawling land dispute that could reshape the kingdom’s economic future.
A Kingdom of Claims
Tooro Kingdom lays claim to approximately 2,655 square kilometres of land in Kasese district. It is also locked in a tug of war with district and national government authorities over smaller parcels totalling roughly 3 square kilometres in Kamwenge and Fort Portal/Kabarole.
But in its actual pocket, the kingdom holds just 9.4 square kilometres of confirmed, titled land in Kamwenge that nobody disputes. That’s a sliver of what it claims overall — but if it won more, it would be sitting pretty.
The Succession Question
The recent death of the beloved King Oyo Nyimba has thrown the kingdom into a succession scramble. The Babiito Clan Succession Committee is expected to elect and install journalist Prince Edward Rukidi Kijanangoma, but that move is already being challenged.
Whoever takes the throne will inherit not just a crown, but a potential economic empire — if the kingdom can capture resources flowing down from Kampala and put them to work.
The Economics of a Throne
From the resurgent Tooro elite’s point of view, whatever comes next in Kampala must be “kingdom-friendly.” That calculation will almost certainly shape how they position themselves in the post-Museveni transition. Anyone watching Uganda’s politics closely — especially the succession scramble now playing out within the ruling House of Kaguta — will have noticed that the fight for the Tooro throne carries the same shape as the bigger fight to come over who rules Uganda.
For now, picture this: an activist king takes over, the elite around him manages to capture resources from Kampala, and they invest in agriculture on just part of the kingdom’s undisputed land. That alone would be a windfall.
Half the kingdom’s titled land comes to about 579.5 acres. Going by standard Uganda farm-economics, split evenly between maize and horticulture (tomatoes, onions, cabbages, helped along by Tooro’s favourable weather), maize at roughly $500 an acre in gross revenue per season, with two seasons a year, works out to about $580,000 a year gross. Net margins would be closer to $300,000–$350,000 once input costs are stripped out.
Horticulture is the bigger prize. At $2,500–$3,000 an acre gross per season, across three seasons a year, it could bring in $4.3–$5.2 million gross, with net profit landing around $2–$2.6 million after the heavier input and labour costs that horticulture demands.
Put together, that’s roughly $5–$5.8 million in gross annual revenue (USh18.3–21.2 billion), and $2.3–$3 million in net annual profit (USh8.4–11.0 billion) — USh26.7–32.2 billion in total.
Real numbers would obviously swing depending on crop mix, input costs, market prices, and post-harvest losses, which eat into margins hard in Uganda’s smallholder-heavy farming sector. But the palace, under a new king, would also become a new centre of economic power.
Dry-Eyed Interest
If numbers like these are flashing through the minds of a few shrewd people in Tooro, then the battle for Karuzika Hill — Fort Portal’s prime address where the king’s palace sits — is about as dry-eyed a contest of interest as you’re likely to find anywhere.
It is not just about tradition. It is about land, money, and who controls the levers of power in a kingdom that, though small, may prove to be a crucial piece in Uganda’s next political era.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist and commentator. This article is based on his analysis of the Tooro Kingdom land dispute and succession battle.
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