The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Uganda: Who will take the lead when the government falters?

•The EITI is of relevance to the emerging oil sector in Uganda.•Transparency in the oil sector involves both benefits and costs for stakeholders.•Non-government stakeholders have limited ability to promote the EITI.•A successful EITI process relies on a strong political will from Government of Uganda.

Uganda is expected to join the group of African oil producing countries in 2018. The Government of Uganda (GoU) has high hopes for the sector and expects oil to transform the country from a low-income into a competitive upper middle-income country by 2040. However, despite these claims, the GoU's management of the sector is already being criticized, specifically over corruption and tax disputes with oil companies.The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has, during the last decade, gained increased recognition as a standard for promoting transparency and revenue disclosure for resource-rich countries. In the 2008 National Oil and Gas Policy (NOGP), the GoU expressed its intention to adopt the standard. The objective of this paper is to analyze why the GoU, seven years later, has still not made any progress with an EITI process. Furthermore, it assesses the leverage and motivation for non-government stakeholders (development partners, civil society and oil companies) to take the lead on the EITI and compensate for the lack of political will.