Land remains the largest and most worthy resource that any parent can leave their children. But then, the common practice is for the children to sub-divide it up among themselves. The majority of them sell off the land while a few use to grow food or build houses.
Gradually, that land loses value. For example, if you are 10 siblings and your father gave you 10 acres of land as a block, it is more valuable to maintain it as a block than fragmenting it up into small portions of one acre each.
Yet, some few families have decided to leave this land as a block and used it commercially and they are not regretting their decision.
On many occasions, President Yoweri Museveni has talked about the dangers of family land fragmentation. The President said: “When writing wills, you (parents) ensure that your children acquire shares in your property. For me, I will not allow my children to sub-divide my land, but acquire shares that allow them to earn from what land and other assets can produce. If, in a family, there are 10 children, each owning 10 shares, it means each child earns sh1m when they earn a profit of sh10m. Parents should plan for their children so that even when they die, they are ok.”
Let parents and their children do this and there will be enough blocks of land for meaningful crop production.
