We can build 100km of road in greater Kampala, every year, for the next 10 years

Every time I drive out of Kampala I am impressed at the state of some of the roads. I am old enough to remember the days when a trip to Rukungiri took the better part of two days, sometimes more.

Usually this was due to the poor state of the road – if a potato garden with bits of tarmac here and there can be called a road – but it also had something to do with the ramshackle buses and trucks that dug through them.

These cars were eternally thirsty. They often ran out of fuel and had you wait by the roadside for hours while the champion rider of the chest-power bicycle in whatever village you found yourself was located, pointed in the general direction of the nearest fuel station, and beseeched to return before darkness. Other times it was a 20-litre jerrycan of water poured down the metallic throat to cool the angry, hissing engine.

Anyway, the roads are much better in many directions (let’s for now ignore the one that runs from Kamuli north to the shores of Lake Kyoga, which must have a constitutional clause requiring Parliament to be dissolved should it be tarmacked, even accidentally) except around Greater Kampala.

They say if you want to understand the political priorities and history of a country follow its roads. If you look at the road map of Uganda you can see that a clear priority was to get good roads to the major border crossings: Malaba, Busia, Mutukula, Katuna, Mpondwe, Elegu, Nimule etc.

Trade is part of it but the need to deploy troops quickly to counter external threats can clearly be seen in the evolution of the road network. But if it is true that those who want peace should prepare for war, then surely those who want war should also prepare for peace, no?

In that case it is time to give Greater Kampala a peace dividend from two decades of the absence of war, especially if we are to avoid the internal instability from hasty, unplanned and unregulated urbanisation.
To see this clearly, take a map of Uganda and, with the General Post Office in Kampala at the centre, draw a circle with a radius of 10 kilometres, then another with a radius of 20 kilometres.

The smaller circle represents most of Central Kampala and its near suburbs where aid money, mostly from the Japanese and the World Bank, have paid to fix major intersections and some central roads. These are also the only roads in this, our Uganda, with traffic lights.

The bigger circle shows an imaginary line where the major road arteries across the country begin. So that would be Mukono, Matugga and Mpigi, onwards. Here, borrowed money, and some from our taxes, has ensured that the major roads are in pretty decent shape. Call this road sign country.

The problem is the missing 10-kilometre belt between the two circles, which includes Kampala’s more peripheral outposts and most of Wakiso District. This is the fastest-growing conurbation and the heart of our services and industrial sector key to GDP growth, yet it has the worst coverage per capita of roads, sewer lines, schools, hospitals, and other essential services.

As with most urban areas, this belt leans heavily towards the opposition during elections and could be paying the penalty through low investment in its infrastructure. However, a more progressive government would see at least the economic benefit of fixing this engine of economic growth, and maybe even get rewarded politically for it.

The Roads Authority recently awarded a contract for the construction and upgrading to tarmac of a 191-kilometre road from Rwenkunye to Puranga via Apac and Lira at a cost of about Shs3.9 billion per kilometre. Now, I have nothing against the good folks in Rwenkunye and I am sure I have friends in Lira, Apac and surrounding areas, but what if they did half the road and spent half the money doing up 100 kilometres of road in Greater Kampala?

Take every planned road upcountry and cut it in half, then spend the half at the centre, where most of the taxes are obtained, anyway. Would we be worse off if we built 100 kilometres of road every year for 10 years spreading out from the General Post Office? For reference, the Northern By-pass from Busega to Namboole is 21 kilometres. They wouldn’t be as wide, of course, but we would have five times as much road, every year, fixing the dysfunctional suburbia. It’s possible – and we can even finish them before the by-pass is complete!

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and poor man’s freedom fighter.
[email protected] @Kalinaki