A chance to invest in students’ hostels
Students at Bugema University gate. The university presents real estate opportunities for people looking to invest around a students’ community. Photos by Tony Mushoborozi
What you need to know:
- On top of the opportunities posed by the university, the neighbouring town of Busiika, which is hardly three kilometres away, is now the go-to place for motorsport.
- The town attracts thousands of revellers on track-days and that is changing the economy of the surrounding villages for miles around. That means that small business premises such as shops or guest houses can still make money around here.
While Bugema University is one of the better-known universities in Uganda, the land around the campus is surprisingly affordable. An acre of land in a two-mile radius of the university goes for as low as Shs20m.
A standard plot of 50 feet by 100 feet goes for as low as Shs6m. For a university village just 30 kilometres outside Kampala, it is hard to imagine how this is the case.
What is not that hard to imagine, however, is that this will be the very last time that land here will be within the purchasing range of most Ugandans. To try and figure out why such prime land is so cheap, we may have to first take a general scan of Bugema University.
The university
Bugema University is technically off the grid even when it is just 33 kilometres north of Kampala city. Unlike most universities, which are located in urban centres, this particular one is located in a quiet village of Kalagala in Bamunanika, Luwero District.
The road to the university is the less-known Gayaza-Namulonge Road. Less-known because if you have no business in Namulonge Agricultural Research Institute or villages of Bulemezi, you will likely not travel by this road. This, therefore, keeps Bugema University out of the radar of many.
This winding tarmac road goes northwards from Gayaza and precipitously ends in Namulonge like a footpath to the lake.
The untouched farmland
All along the way, little mud roads branch off to the untouched farming villages of central Uganda.
Bugema is one of these quiet villages, except it has a university to boast about.
Though the history of this university goes as far back as 1948, when it was set up to train pastors for the Seventh Day Adventist church, its growth has only accelerated in the last decade or so. For instance, as recently as the year 2000, Bugema’s student population was a measly 800.
Just eight years ago, in 2010, it became a chartered university. Though it has several campuses across the country, today the student population at the Bugema campus stands at close to 3000 students.
Such is the dramatic way the university’s population has grown in such a short time.
There are lots of business opportunities in this area, with ready clientele in the student community.
Anywhere within a five kilometre radius should be fine,” says Peter Byamugisha, a property broker in the area.
A small community in one of the newly occupied parts of Bugema.
Accommodation investment
As expected, the university cannot house this increasing number of students in its hostels. There is huge business opportunity for private student’s hostels, on top of a host of other businesses.
“There are students’ hostels in the neighbouring trading centres of Busiika and Kiziri that are flooded with students.
“One of the hostels is some six kilometres towards Namulonge, and it is not short of tenants,” says Joshua Kiyimba, a former student of the university.
It can be expected that Bugema is at the cusp of becoming a booming economy. Any Ugandan town that is lucky to have a major university in its precincts tends to be more socially vibrant and financially desirable. There is an undeniable multiplier effect that comes with thousands of students living together in a radius of two square kilometres. They have to eat. They have to drink. There clothes have to be washed. Bugema’s time is now.
A case in point
Ishaka trading centre in Bushenyi is one such example. Just 15 years ago, it was a pale block of shops surviving on a lackluster banana trade and milk production. Its glory days as a beloved home-away-from-home for the Uganda People’s Congress were long gone.
It was just another trading centre in the countryside struggling with poverty. The biggest conversation starter was the drought because everyone here was a farmer who just happened to live on the main road.
Then Kampala International University opened a branch in the area in 2004. Everything changed. Today, just 14 years later, Ishaka is the most important town in the greater Bushenyi area. Big storeyed buildings have since sprung up everywhere, most of which are students’ hostels of course. Businesses are doing fine and this former trading center is now a fully-fledged urban centre. There is an exciting buzz around the town.
Invest now
Bugema University is expanding and the more that happens, the more students it will take. There is a health centre that the university is using for its nursing courses.
There is a vocational school and secondary school. All this means that the land around the university is effectively prime. It is against that background that we would like to encourage you to buy land in the general area of Bugema. This is for anyone who has always wanted to invest in students’ hostels but was always encumbered by steep land prices.
It is for that person who has always wished they had a plot of land around Makerere when the student explosion happened in the late 90s and resulted in big business for hostels.
It is for you who wants to buy land for resale, as a way to grow your money. Thank us later.
