This policy perspective paper examines how Uganda’s National Oil and Gas Policy (2008) — particularly objectives 9(c) and 10(f) — embeds Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a vehicle for translating the country’s natural-resource wealth into broad-based social and economic development. The authors assess the CSR entry points currently built into the policy and argue for scaling up oil and gas companies’ CSR activities so that they deliberately engage women, youth, and elderly community members in the Albertine region (including Hoima, Kikuube, and Buliisa districts). The paper links these CSR entry points to two priorities of Uganda’s third National Development Plan (NDP-3) — community mobilisation and mindset change, and natural resource and environmental management — and closes by urging oil and gas operators, local government officials, and the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development to use more rigorous CSR and social-compliance reporting to guide licensing decisions, MoU negotiations, and gender-inclusive development planning.

This chapter was originally published in Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure in Developing and Emerging Economies (Uzoechi Nwagbara, Samuel O. Idowu & Yahaya Alhassan, Eds.), Springer, Cham, 2024, pp. 171–190 (CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance series). It is a traditionally published, copyright-protected book chapter — not open access — and is indexed here as a reference entry with full credit to the original authors and publisher. The complete chapter is available from Springer via the DOI link below.