{UAH} State of the Nation 2019: Roads

State of the Nation 2019: Roads
By Timothy Kalyegira

-- The Minister of Finance Matia Kasaija stated yesterday during his presentation of the budget proposals before parliament that Uganda now has 5,350 km of all-weather roads.

There were 987 km of all-weather roads in 1986, Kasaija said.

Now, I don't want to politicise this one way or the other but just want to give readers a historical overview of where Uganda is today in comparison with where it was 40 years ago.

There certainly has been a major effort over the last ten years or so to repair or upgrade the national road network.

But what was the situation like during the Idi Amin era, regarded by many as the lowest point in Uganda's post-independence history?

Let's refer to the British political almanac, The Statesman's Year-Book 1976-77, in its entry on Uganda.

It states:

"There are 3,876 miles of all-weather roads maintained by the Ministry of Works, of which 796 miles are two-lane bitumenized highways, and some 11,230 miles of other roads, maintained by district governments." (page 514)

3,876 miles is equivalent to 6,237 kilometres.

This means, by Kasaija's statement, that Uganda needs to build 887 kilometres more of tarmac or all-weather roads just to get back to the area covered by all-weather roads 44 years ago in 1975.

Uganda in 1975 had more tarmac roads than it has today.

Also important to note is this part: "maintained by the Ministry of Works...and some 11,230 miles of other roads, maintained by district governments."

Today, practically all the new highways and municipal roads are being built by the Chinese, with a few smaller municipal roads in Kampala and Mbarara built by Abubaker Technical Services.

In the early 1970s, local, municipal and sub-county roads were "maintained by district governments", i.e, by local government authorities.

As I said, I don't want this to be turned into the common Ugandan tendency to politicise everything and try to score points.

Rather, it's just to give those born in the later 1970s and afterward, or anyone who was not in Uganda in the 1970s a way to compare both periods, the 1970s and this the second decade of the 21st Century.

And those tarmac roads were maintained by the Ministry of Works and by local district authorities.

Today, it requires loans from Chinese banks and Chinese companies to do what in 1975 was done by the Uganda government.

In other words, if we build 800 km more of tarmac roads over the next several years, all we shall be doing is getting Uganda back to where it was in 1975.

Here's another comparison, this time in aviation.

In her 2011 autobiography "My Life's Journey", the First Lady Janet Museveni describes Entebbe International Airport as it was back in 1966 when she joined East African Airways as a ground stewardess:

"Entebbe, although a small airport, was quite international, and numerous airlines had routes through it…In fact, there were more airlines that had routes through Entebbe than today." (page 46).

So according to Mrs. Museveni, there were more airlines operating in and out of Entebbe in 1966 than there are today.

Uganda today, with an increasing number of airlines operating flights to Entebbe, is just struggling to get to where it was in 1966 in terms of the number of airlines.

The moral of this story is for Ugandans to understand just how much time they have lost over the decades.

What looks like development and economic growth today is actually just returning the country to where it was 40 or 50 years ago.

This is not to condemn or praise anyone. It is just to get us reflecting.

ENDS

Sent from Gook's iPhone

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