Kiteezi crisis, one year on: Fresh loads of garbage being dumped

On the night of August 9, 2024, most of Kiteezi slept under a pale moon.

By dawn, parts of the village no longer existed. Sometime before sunrise, the mountain of garbage that had loomed over the community for decades, a man-made hill of rotting waste, plastics and industrial debris, gave way.

The collapse buried homes, flattened gardens, and took lives in an instant. For years, residents had lived in uneasy coexistence with the Kiteezi landfill, Kampala’s main dumping ground since 1997.

They had grown used to the stench, the flies, the occasional small slide of soil and rubbish after a heavy rain. But no one expected the hill to move with such violence. Now, a year later, Kiteezi is still struggling to bury its dead and to find a future. On paper, much has happened since the landslide.

President Yoweri Museveni pledged emergency funds for the bereaved and injured; five million shillings for every life lost, one million for each survivor. Relief trucks arrived. A cabinet budget approved billions for landfill stabilization, drainage clearing, and even the purchase of a new dumping site.

Yet, on the ground, the picture looks different. The road into Kiteezi is still a patchwork of potholes. Garbage trucks still arrive daily, tipping fresh loads onto the same unstable ground. And families who once lived here still camp with relatives or sleep in cramped rentals, waiting for the “compensation” that many say has never arrived.

“President Museveni, you have given out money everywhere,” said Joshua Ariho, whose home was destroyed, “but we who had homes in Kiteezi are now sleeping on the streets.”

For Ariho and others, the year has been a blur of grief and bureaucracy, marked by unanswered questions: Who is truly responsible for the collapse? Why has the government not relocated the landfill despite years of warnings?

And why, after so much public money was allocated, do they still feel forgotten? The Kiteezi landfill was never meant to last this long. Established on 36 acres in 1997, it was designed as a temporary solution to Kampala’s growing waste problem.

Within a decade, it was already over capacity. By 2023, the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) Public Health directorate was openly warning that the waste mountain was dangerously unstable.

Their recommendations were clear: relocate the landfill or expand it into an adjoining four-acre plot. Land had already been acquired in Mukono district for a modern waste facility, but the project stalled. Kiteezi remained the city’s sole dumping ground, receiving around 2,500 tonnes of rubbish a day.

When the collapse came, Kampala lord mayor Erias Lukwago called it “a tragedy that was bound to happen.” President Museveni was more blunt: “Who allowed people to live so close to such a hazardous heap?”

SCANDAL IN THE RUBBLE

The disaster might have spurred a focus on safety, but it also exposed deeper rot in city governance. In August 2025, Lukwago told parliament’s Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities, and State Enterprises (COSASE) that KCCA officials had stolen the landfill’s weighbridge, a critical piece of equipment for monitoring incoming waste, and smuggled it to Rwanda.

“I have the Auditor General’s report,” Lukwago said. “It showed our weighbridge at Kiteezi was stolen by KCCA officials.”

KCCA’s legal director, Frank Rusa, confirmed that the Directorate of Criminal Investigations is probing the case. For residents, the allegation is more than a theft story; it’s proof of a system where public safety is compromised by corruption and negligence. In the shadow of the garbage hill, life goes on.

The air smells of decay, but for many in Kiteezi, the landfill is the only source of income. Men, women and children pick through fresh mounds of waste, searching for plastic bottles, jerrycans and containers to sell to recycling firms.

“I walk here every morning to collect bottles so I can buy food for my children,” said one woman, her hands blackened by soil and residue.

This reality underscores a cruel paradox: the landfill that killed their neighbors still sustains them. Any talk of relocation or closure brings mixed feelings; fear for their safety, but also fear of losing their livelihoods. KCCA says it has no mandate to pay legal compensation, only to document losses.

Of the billions released by cabinet, much went to immediate engineering fixes, buying new dumping land, and administrative transfers. Only 34 houses, according to KCCA audits, qualified for formal compensation.

The government insists the president’s emergency payouts were not legal settlements, and that further compensation would depend on whether investigations found negligence. That distinction means many survivors remain in limbo, too damaged to rebuild, too uncertain to move forward.

Despite government promises to decommission Kiteezi, garbage trucks keep coming. Experts warn that the underlying risks remain, from further slides to contamination of local water sources by landfill runoff. And while Kiteezi has become a cautionary tale for urban planning and waste management, many residents believe little has changed.

“We are still living under the same garbage,” said Fred Mutaawe, whose family lost their home. “Only now, we know what it can do.”

LESSONS UNLEARNED

The Kiteezi landslide is not the first waste disaster in Africa, nor the largest. But it is a uniquely Ugandan tragedy: one shaped by rapid urban growth, weak enforcement, and the politics of survival in a city where garbage is both a hazard and a livelihood.

For some, the disaster is a symbol of official negligence. For others, it’s a reminder of how corruption, from stolen infrastructure to mismanaged budgets, can deepen the human cost of natural and man-made hazards.

One year on, Kiteezi remains both a dumping ground and a graveyard. Its people live with the smell of rot, the memory of loss, and the unshakable knowledge that unless the promises turn into action, the garbage will move again.