I recently hitched a Coaster bus from the Old Taxi Park to Jinja. I got to the Taxi Park at midday, the bus set off at 3 pm, and we arrived in Jinja past 7 pm.
It is 2025, and a mere 96-kilometre journey in Uganda took more than four hours. Those four hours were an eye-opener for me. They revealed something about Uganda’s productivity crisis, largely caused by our inability to connect places, or better stated as poor traffic management.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Uganda’s GDP (current US Prices) is USD 64.23 billion. It implies that Uganda’s productivity by the hour comes down to USD 7.3 million. In an hour, Ugandans collectively produce value worth USD 7.3 million.
It thus goes without saying that Ugandans are losing money to the drain with every hour wasted in these traffic gridlocks. Thus, if we unlocked our productivity on the roads, we could achieve multiplier effects in our GDP.
Let’s return to the Kampala-Jinja highway. This is Uganda’s most important road. It is our main inlet and outlet to the external world. This road accounts for more than 90 per cent of Uganda’s imports and exports.
In 2018, the African Development Bank approved the Kampala-Jinja expressway road project. Construction was slated to begin in 2022 with the project estimated to take five years.
That means, in 2027, the project would have gone live. By the time of writing this commentary, bid evaluation is ongoing, and thus, the country cannot expect to reap the benefits of this project until 2030. And what happened?
It is alleged that a whistleblower went to the President with reports of bribery and corruption around the initial awarding of the project. In 2020, the President wrote a letter to the then Works minister, Monica Azuba and directed that the tendering process of the Kampala-Jinja expressway be halted.
Then, the President ordered that the process be redone in a more transparent manner with a different financing approach. The overall cost of the project is placed at $1.5 billion. Let’s assume the value of corruption surrounding this project was up to $20 million, does it in any way equate to the GDP lost through the traffic congestion?
In development, there are no perfect solutions, just trade-offs. And in the case of this road, by aiming to have a corruption-free project, we’ve set the country back, we’ve cost it much more than we were attempting to save. And the project won’t even get cheaper; it will get more expensive, due to the time factor involved.
In hindsight, I have concluded that this was a presidential blunder of historical proportions. It was a national betrayal. For lack of better words, we could say that these kinds of delays on critical infrastructure amount to economic terrorism. The President in his letter, had argued that ‘roads are not the major cost reducers compared to railway and electricity’.
But someone ought to have whispered to the President that this was not just any other road, it was the national artery. Better still, it should be known to the President that there’s no railway yet to compare this road to, and this road cannot be compared to electricity (it’s apples to mangoes).
Logistics (roads) and electricity (utilities) play different functions in the production chain, and thus are incomparable. The economy is about activity, and activity is about turnaround. How quickly can a person turn around a truck from Kampala to Jinja or from Kampala to Malaba?
You have time productivity loss, lower turnover, and higher unit transport costs. Coupled to this, you have higher operational costs. If a truck is going to spend twice as much on the road, then it is implicitly implied that fuel costs double, driver costs, increased vehicle wear and tear and a loss in perishables.
It also means that the country cannot achieve competitiveness on its key route. The Kampala-Jinja highway is a national artery. And a neglect of the national artery is tantamount to economic sabotage.
We cannot afford further delays on this road. It must be treated as a national emergency, and a different procurement process ought to be devised for such critical national projects. Thus, if I were the President of Uganda, and such a thing happened, I would be left with no option but to offer a national apology.
And the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni ought to do that. To offer an apology not just to the current citizenry, but to the future generations who’ve been robbed of a head-start because of a delayed road.
The author is a concerned citizen
My friend observer do you want us the readers of your articles to read the advertisements or your articles? If that is the case, then could you underline them for us properly.
Well stated. The advert is right in the middle of the article. They need a better manager on their online presence.
Messing up the paper with these ads. Please stop them. whoever advised you on this was wrong. These ads are highly irritating and that is not how a paper should work if it is to please it clientele
It is unfortunate indeed that Uganda’s well known NRM corruption has stopped the speed of development of this Jinja Express way that is believed will connect to Tororo then into Kenya, Nairobi to the Trans-African Highway Network. Such an expensive African highway construction aims to cover 56,683 kilometres with about 9 other highways between Cairo in Egypt to Cape Town in South Africa. Driving a car from Cairo to Cape Town might take what time and in which year in the future no one knows? Most probably electric cargo and passenger trains would follow along such famous and ancient international trade routes on the African continent. One understands such a major North to South Pan African highway network was diverted away from Sudan down into Uganda for unknown reasons and should have been finished by 2024!
I am concerned about the adverts that interfere with the little editorial matter supposed to reach us by covering the news or features in an ad hoc manner. What is the purpose? Please explain and rectify.
So, why is Rwandese Museveni assured of lifetime rule & succession by his son in the waiting?
Why are Ugandans waiting to legalise Museveni with next fake presidential, parliamentary, local elecftions, even knowing he will rule with or without?
Why are Ugandans still happy tribally divided without National/Common Leader to UNITE them to block & show Museveni way out?
Soon 40 years of Museveni seem to be 5 years & Ugandans just look up to him for development, but why will he do so when being his poor slaves in the wasted zone is the power he has to control & rule for life!
UN gets billions through dictatorship, bad rule in shitholes & ensures wars, migration to developed well governed lands too!
Developed well governed lands are at political war while giving financial help to useless rulers in shitholes, thus attract migrants who understood their only chance to a better tomorrow is in developed lands!
The day that people like you understand that insults will only alienate potential recruits to the anti-M7 drive, that’s the day we will begin registering global success in mobilizing against him. Unfortunately, that argument goes way over the heads of your kind.
And where does Sudanese Akot get the audacity to throw insults at a man she has fought and failed to defeat for the last 40 years? A metallic man who defeated all your non-Rwandese ancestors and subdued them into praying for his natural demise? Now he is bringing his son and you will have another 50 years of ‘Rwandese’ rule. Be humble
But the ads cover the article, please make then separate
Well, you can’t estimate the portion of the funds that will go to embezzlement. It could be more
I think president’s judgement on this one was right. Whenever we have a chance to crackdown on corruption, we should.
But remember halting the process hampers with everything and no one cares, it’s campaign time now and no one cares about such a crucial project shame on the leaders who claim to advocate for service delivery
All factors considered, I think the president was ill advised to hault the project.
It is well known that the Jinja corridor is much more important than most projects currently underway, and would make them much cheaper with an express way.
What is annoyingly amusing about Uganda and we so called concerned citizens, is that we never really appreciate what we have because we have never really been in a situation of trully lacking especially those born under the current regime.
Everything we believe is based on assumptions of we could be better or the government could have done better. UNFORTUNATE TRUTH, CORRUPTION IS ONLY BAD IF YOU ARE NOT BENEFITING FROM IT. Back to the road, if the project had moved on then he is the president that doesn’t try to deal with corruption but if he deals with corruption then he has delayed growth.
Can we as a people learn to appreciate the leaps that we have achieved as a people and a country. Let’s not measure Uganda’s growth using the America and Europe as a yardstick. Uganda is just half a century and a few years older as compared to other countries we are comparing it to.
The reality is this is our truth, it’s not the best but we need to push it to get to where we need our country to be corrupt or no corruption. Besides all the other countries have underlying failures in their systems and management but you and I never get to know or learn about them because we are not looking deeper into their daily lives or we just don’t care. FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY
One reason am glad with this article is the fact that someone has laboured to to put it out there how backward we continue to put ourselves with poor decisions with regard to the logistical network. Some day somewhere one of our children will pick it up and say, “No More!” … and then that will result in positive progressive policy and action.
Of course there are many facets to these things, but at the very least something it out there.
Ivan Ortega, our 84-years-old PROBLEM OF AFRICA,S blunder, did not start yesterday. In 1987, a few years to the end of the 20th century, the man started his backward blunders by experimenting with Pre-stone age Barter Trade.
E.g., if from 1903 up to Jan 1986, when he violently took power there was a fully operational Uganda Railways transport; but today in the 21st Century there is not a single meter of the Uganda Railways operating?
By the way what happened to the 2012 Launched SGR where Gen P Kagame and Salva Kiir participated at, of all places, the Speke Resort Munyonyo, but not somewhere along the Kampala-Jinja Railway line?
If from 1978 to Jan 1986, there was affordable Uganda Airline Domestic Flights, but today there is none, how backward has the guy taken the country called Uganda?
Ugandans must be reminded that, while Mr. M7 was jumping over thousands of Ugandans dead bodies in order to enter our State House on Jan 25th 1986, Singapore; which came to Uganda in mid 1960 to benchmarked their economic development programme from Uganda, was launching its City Metro Sub-way transport system.
In other words, including the current Boda-boda terror and menace as the Main Urban Public Transport; that is how, bogus, painful and backward (malicious) Mr. M7 and his multiple bunders brought Ugandans to their current social economic, sic quagmire (knees).