Decades ago, the Ssese Islands, which make up Kalangala District, were neglected and isolated. Only a handful of people used to explore the 84-island archipelago that is located in Lake Victoria, about 60 kilometres from the mainland in Kampala.
Back then there was only one small ferry that used to ply the Bukakata-Masaka route once a day, which made transport to and from Kalangala a painful undertaking. The road network in Kalangala was also in an alarmingly poor state, and this lack of transport infrastructure and other social services made life difficult for the islanders, whose main economic activities were fishing, lumbering and subsistence farming.
When Joyce Kikomeko first visited the Ssese Islands in 1991 as part of a delegation of 100 people from Namirembe Diocese who had gone on a retreat, the whole journey from Kampala took them about 12 hours because they had to use the Masaka route and the roads were very bad and narrow.
Back then, there was only one small lodge in the area, with only four rooms, and so they had to sleep in a school dormitory on Bugala Island – the biggest and most populous of the 84 islands.
Discovering a hidden gem
“The dormitory we slept in was bat-infested and uncomfortable. I could not even sleep. But when I woke up the following morning, I was so inspired by the beauty of the place that I instantly fell in love with, Ssese. It was so green; the entire place was a bush under a canopy of forests,” Ms Kikomeko narrates.
After the retreat, Ms Kikomeko asked the district administrator (DA) if she could find a plot of land to buy on the islands and set up a hotel, and the DA asked her, “who on earth will come to your hotel?” Nevertheless, she found the land she wanted and applied for it at the district land board and started construction of the first hotel in the Ssese Islands – the Ssese Islands Beach Hotel – which was completed in 1996.
Back then there was no running water or electricity on the islands, and Ms Kikomeko had to build her own water project one kilometre away from her hotel to get running water and also installed solar panels on her facility to get electricity.
“We started getting a few clients in 1996, mostly locals from Kampala who came to the islands for retreats. But there were a few international tourists who also used to come around then,” she says.
Ms Kikomeko inspired a few other entrepreneurs to invest in Ssese hotel sector and, by the year 2000, about four more hotels had been constructed – transforming the archipelago from a forgotten backwater to a thriving holiday destination.
Hospitality
Following the government’s investments in improving roads, water transport and electricity and water supply that aimed to facilitate Bidco’s oil palm project that was started on the islands in 2003, more private sector players saw the potential of the islands as a tourist destination and built numerous hotels here – from budget to midrange and luxury.
“We now have more than 40 hotels on Bugala Island and about 700 rooms. Three of them are high-end and the sector is now a major source of income for residents, employing about 300 people directly and hundreds more indirectly,” said Gladys Nabukenya, Kalangala District tourism officer.
Today, the archipelago has become a magnet for both local and international travellers who are attracted by activities on offer. For example, boat cruises, sport fishing, quad biking, nature walks, cultural encounters and visits to the chimpanzee sanctuary on Ngamba Island.
Oil palm-driven development
“Major developments have taken place here in the last 10 years, and the driving force has been Bidco’s oil palm project because the government committed to improving infrastructure services on the islands to facilitate the development of the oil palm sector,” said Andrew Kilama, the managing director of Kalangala Infrastructure Services (KIS).
KIS, a private-public partnership that was formed to provide services such as water and electricity, began operations in 2013 and is co-funded by the Uganda Development Corporation, Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund and InfraCO Africa, among other development partners.
By the time KIS started operations, there was not even a kilometre of a paved road and only 450 homesteads were connected to the electricity grid in the entire Kalangala District, which has an estimated population of about 70,000 people.
But today, all roads on Bugala Island, home to Kalangala District headquarters and the most occupied island in the Ssese, are under construction thanks to funding from the Uganda Road Fund.
Two ferries now ply the Bukakata-Masaka route every 30 minutes and one ferry plies the Bugala-Entebbe route once a day, a journey that takes three-and-a-half hours.
“Now we also have more than 5,000 homesteads connected to electricity – which is produced locally by solar and thermal plants operated by KIS – and the government recently laid undersea cables and we’ll soon be connected to the national grid,” Mr Kilama said.
John Ekudel, Kalangala district chief finance officer, said the economic environment of Kalangala has changed over the years, but it is oil palm growing that came as a major game changer because the sector has lifted many people out of poverty.
Currently, an estimated 25,862 acres of land on Bugala Island are dedicated to commercial oil palm production. On average, 10 acres of oil palm plantations fetch a farmer between Shs3 million to Shs7 million per month depending on current prices and harvests, and yet the plantations require limited labour input, according to Mr Ekedel.
Data from Kalangala Oil Palm Growers Trust (KOPGT) indicates that farmers have been churning out at least 50 million tonnes of crude palm oil per year – earning Shs40 million in revenue. The sector employs more than 2,000 smallholder farmers directly and more than 6,000 individuals indirectly, according to KOPGT data.
Mr Ekudel said because of oil palm, the standards of living of the islanders have improved significantly over the years. While people here used to be known for living in shack houses, now Bugala Island in particular is awash with many decent permanent houses and various businesses have been set up in Kalangala town – but this has also come with an increase in the cost of living.
“The cost of living in Kalangala Town is quite high compared with Kampala, but you can see that people are not struggling because most of them are involved in oil palm farming, which is a very good source of passive income,” he said.
