Works at the section of Kyengera-Buddo on Masaka Road that caved in following a downpour on Sunday night. PHOTO/JOSEPH KIGGUNDU
The Government of Uganda (GoU) this week, much like road users in most parts of the country, found itself at a crossroads as the dark underbelly of road-building projects came under the intense glare of a spotlight. This was not always the case.
The GoU had held up the road-building projects as something remotely close to a silver bullet. At least that is what Gen Edward Katumba Wamala, the Works and Transport minister said at the back end of April when he appeared before the Parliamentary Forum on Road Safety (PAFROS).
He spoke glowingly about a plan that will culminate in the installation of smart traffic lights at specific points of main arteries on roads in the capital. The plan is being undertaken by the government with support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). “What you see in Kampala now is a development […] we are going to have a centralised control system under the JICA project working with KCCA [Kampala Capital City Authority.
That is why you see all these roundabouts being improved,” Minister Wamala told the lawmakers.
He added: “Once this control centre is made, these lights are going to be smart lights, which can detect that there is more traffic on this side than on the other side.”
The minister acknowledged the disruptions that the road-building projects had triggered but hastened to add that motorists were facing short-term pain safe in the knowledge that long-term gain beckoned.
For motorists, for whom driving on roads in Uganda can be a fraught experience, this seemed like a trade-off worth taking.
But 43 days after Gen Wamala had sold his pitch to PAFROS, he made an awkward visit to the residence of the richest man in Uganda, Sudhir Ruparelia. The property magnate’s son, Rajiv, had just died in a freak accident at the Kampala-Entebbe Expressway (KEE).
Rapex mistake?
While cameras from the KEE and anecdotal evidence pointed to Rajiv driving recklessly, Minister Wamala would days later confess that a Chinese firm contracted to work on a stretch where the accident transpired asked its workers to down their tools. Why? Mounting arrears.
Deceased Ugandan businessman Rajiv Ruparelia (inset). To the right is the wreckage of the car in which he died on May 3, 2025. PHOTO/COMBO/COURTESY
Rajiv was one of many victims of an abandoned arterial road. The Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra) previously ran the rule over such active construction sites before it was claimed by the Rationalisation of Government Agencies and Public Expenditure (Rapex) last year.
“These roads, apart from those of KCCA, it was a mistake by Unra to open many roads at the same time when that given time they would demand more funding, but we are working on it,” Mr Fred Byamukama, the junior Works and Transport minister, said this week of road-building projects exacerbating Uganda’s road traffic accident record.
“We got a supplementary budget especially for our national roads. We are being affected by a merger (Rapex), but we have sorted that one out. Beginning from next week, most of the contractors are going to be back on site to complete their works,” Minister Byamukama added.
While the junior minister was quick to close the page on the merger between his ministry and Unra, the House was not as enthusiastic. “We thought rationalising Unra would lead to better service delivery, but it seems things have only deteriorated,” Ms Anita Among, the House Speaker, said this week in Parliament. Appearing in the House this past week, Mr Musa Ecweru, another junior Works and Transport minister, conceded that “the state of the national roads in the country is indeed a cause for concern”.
“As of FY (Financial Year) 2024/2025, 1,880km of paved roads require periodic maintenance, while 615km have already deteriorated to the level of requiring full rehabilitation. This backlog is the result of consistent underfunding for maintenance activities over the years,” he said.
Mr Ecweru added: “The National Roads Development Programme faces a severe funding deficit in FY 2025/2026. The current budgetary allocations are far below the resources required for the timely completion of critical road development, rehabilitation, and maintenance projects. The consequences of this deficit will affect government programmes.”
Tough road ahead
The FY 2025/2026 doesn’t look primed to bring with it respite, as a funding gap of Shs2.472 trillion suggests. The Works and Transport ministry requested for Shs3.15 trillion for the new FY, but it has only been cleared to receive Shs682 billion. This, reasoned Minister Ecweru, is a drop in the ocean.
The laundry list of unmet needs that the minister rattled off includes: “Domestic arrears of over Shs1 trillion, which continue to accrue interest daily; land acquisition; urgent maintenance, rehabilitation, reconstruction and upgrading of key road links across the country; and bridge and ferry development projects, including emergency works on bridges affected by adverse weather in the last two years.”
Works and transport state minister Musa Ecweru prepares to symbolically cut a ribbon at the commissioning of Karuma Bridge at its reopening on December 20, 2024. PHOTO/BILL OKETCH
Information that Mr Ecweru shared at the House shows that “there has been a reduced budgetary allocation to the development and maintenance of roads over the last three years as compared to the funding envelope required to implement the roads programme in the third national development plan (NDPIII).”
It adds that “allocations have sharply fallen from 90 percent of the expected allocation in FY 2022/23 to only 20 percent in FY 2025/26”. And this has not been without consequences, with the Works and Transport ministry noting that “it will be impossible to undertake the activities in the work plan with potential catastrophic effects on the state of roads across the country.” “Already 615km of the paved network have deteriorated beyond maintainable levels and will require expensive interventions in the form of rehabilitation or in some cases, full reconstruction,” Mr Ecweru disclosed.
The deteriorating road infrastructure has been met with an upsurge in road crashes. “Road traffic crashes increased in 2024 as compared to 2023 by 6.4 per cent from 23,608 in 2023 to 25,107 in 2024. Out of the total crashes reported to Police, 4,434 were fatal, 13,134 were serious and 7,539 were minor,” the Uganda Police Annual Crime Report of 2024 reads in part. The road crashes have also filled the accident and emergency units of many health facilities.
In 2022, Ms Hanifa Kawooya, the junior Health minister, revealed that the GoU spends Shs1.5 billion each month on covering medical care of accident victims alone in the country. In moving to resolve the issue of bad road infrastructure causing accidents, the GoU has done itself little favours by biting off more than it can chew.
While Minister Byamukama said he is confident lightning will not strike twice, Mr Omongo Ndugu, the executive director of Uganda Professional Drivers’ Network (UPDN), says the patchy road signage has to be addressed immediately. “If our roads don’t provide for where motorcycles and buses have to pass, what does that mean? It means we are in a terrible situation where we need to speak to each other that we have failed to have good roads for now,” he told Saturday Monitor. Mr Ndugu added: “We have not standardised a training manual for drivers in Uganda because the training programme starts from the training of trainers.”
He had no kind words for the government that he accuses of not following the laws it makes and for having relaxed supervision on driving schools across the country. Consequently, Mr Ndugu said: “The only solution we have at the moment to save lives of Ugandans on the roads is for us to reduce speed.
If the incompetent driver crashes, then they crash at low speed that cannot claim their lives and also the lives of other users.”
On his part, Mr Ecweru wants the GoU to deploy resources on “periodic maintenance interventions like resealing and local repairs compared to the full rehabilitation that is usually required when a road is neglected.” The cost of the periodic maintenance, he disclosed in the House this week, ranges between Shs646 million to Shs1.14 billion per kilometre. The cost of the rehabilitation ranges from Shs2.28 billion to Shs2.66 billion per kilometre.
