At the inaugural Tilenga Social Performance Forum in Kampala, TotalEnergies EP Uganda tabled its 2025 Social Report - more than 10,500 Ugandan jobs, agri-business linkages and a rebuttal to years of critical reporting.
By Grace Nabirye..Kampala & Buliisa.6 min read
Kampala & Buliisa. 24 September 2025.
MixedOil & Energy
In September 2025, TotalEnergies EP Uganda convened the inaugural Tilenga Social Performance Forum at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel and released its 2025 Social Report. The headline number: more than 10,500 Ugandans employed across the Tilenga project since first oil work began, with a growing majority of those jobs held by nationals.
The forum, co-hosted with the Petroleum Authority of Uganda and opened by Energy Minister Okaasai Sidronius Opolot, was pitched as evidence that Uganda's flagship upstream development is delivering measurable local value. It was also, plainly, a response to years of critical reporting - LivingWellUganda's included - on displacement and compensation along the Tilenga and EACOP corridors.
What the report claims
TotalEnergies documents road upgrades, borehole works, agri-business training and a new Tilenga Agri-Business Forum linking smallholder farmers in Buliisa to project supply chains. The company points to more than 100 million dollars in local buying in 2024 alone, and to school and clinic works in the Kingfisher-adjacent parishes.
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Value has to be measured in what the household budget looks like after the trucks leave, not while they are still here.
District Community Development Officer, Buliisa
What the field record still shows
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None of the 2025 social-report figures cancels the FIDH, Human Rights Watch and Guardian findings that many households displaced by EACOP and Tilenga remain inadequately compensated. Both pictures are true at the same time. The forum's most useful outcome would be to publish grievance-resolution data with the same detail as the jobs numbers. Until that happens, LivingWellUganda will continue to file both stories side by side.
Reading a company-authored jobs number
The Petroleum Authority of Uganda has its own national content monitoring unit tasked with verifying operator employment claims, but its reports are published on a slower cycle than the company's own social reports, so the 10,500 figure has entered public debate well ahead of any independent cross-check. Labour economists caution that a headline jobs number rarely distinguishes between permanent, salaried roles and short-term construction-phase contracts that will disappear once the pipeline and wellpads are finished.
TotalEnergies has said it will publish a breakdown of job categories in a future report, following requests from civil society groups at the Tilenga forum itself, who pressed the company on exactly this distinction during the open question session.
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Ten thousand jobs sounds like a number. It is really ten thousand different contracts, and the contract length is the part that matters to a household.
Labour economist, Kampala
What to watch next is whether the Petroleum Authority's own verification exercise, once published, matches the company's figures. Whether the promised job-category breakdown shows how many of those roles are expected to survive into the operational phase of the project.
Evidence & documents
Every claim above is checked against the records below. Open each one to see where it comes from.
01Empowering Communities: TotalEnergies Showcases Social Impact at Tilenga Forum▾
Grace Nabirye investigates land, water and energy projects and how they land on households. She has long-running coverage of the Albertine oil region, including company jobs and community health programmes there, and of Kampala water supply.
