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Christine Najjuma, 43, is a mother of five who lives and operates a small restaurant in Bwaise, a low-lying and flood-prone district of Kawempe division, Kampala.  

In recent years, when it rained heavily, she stayed at home because her restaurant flooded, making it hard for her to work.

However, her business and others that were frequently threatened by pluvial floods saw a new lease of life when the Lubigi and Nakamiro water drainage systems were constructed and completed in early 2022.

The drainage channels have, to a certain extent, reduced heavy rainfall run-offs and sewer overflows in Bwaise and surrounding areas. Like in most flood-prone areas of Kampala, the runoffs and overflows often disrupted public transport and contributed to a rise in cases of typhoid fever and other waterborne illnesses, like diarrhea and dysentery.

Bwaise and its surroundings, however, represent just a fraction of Kampala’s suburbs. Many experts in urban resilience concur that Kampala, on the whole, is still far from flood-proof and resilient, as evidenced by periodic flash floods in Katanga, Kisenyi, Katwe, Ndeeba, and Kinawataka, among other areas.

“Kampala, in general, still has major resilience challenges, not just floods. If we are talking floods, on a scale of one to 10, its resilience hovers around fi ve, and it will remain low as long as city drainage systems are clogged, often with discarded plastic waste and other types of garbage,” Simon Arapada, a researcher in urban resilience and climate change adaptation, says.

“The city’s flood resilience should have considerably improved by now on account of the launch in 2015, of what was touted as an effective Drainage Master Plan, but implementation has invariably been a challenge.” The Master Plan recommended structural measures, such as the construction of new drainage systems in flood-prone areas, and non-structural measures, such as improving solid waste management.

In a recent report titled Reconciling multiple forms of flood risk knowledge and institutional responses: Insights from Kampala’s flood management regime, published by Science Direct, Ugandan University of Manchester PhD scholar, Denis Arinabo, noted that Kampala’s drainage improvement initiatives have not significantly improved the city’s flood risk management due to changing flood risk drivers, political interference, and uncoordinated fl ood risk interventions.

According to Arapada, Kampala and other Ugandan cities are only experiencing uneven or partial urban resilience (some areas are more organised than others) and they are making slow progress in developing sustainable urban infrastructure and resilience capacity — both of which are critical steps towards achieving the 2030 agenda for sustainability.

Aside from floods, the other resilience challenges Kampala continues to face that threaten its ability to function sustainably, including wetland degradation (Nsooba-Lubigi and Kinawataka wetlands), worsening road safety, inadequate housing, urban sprawl, poor air quality, urban poverty, poor and disorganised public transportation systems, and limited or destroyed green and public spaces.

Housing and urban development expert Linus Mabonga says many of these resilience challenges are likely to get worse due to climate change, uncoordinated interventions, rapid urbanisation, and the growing population.

“Unless Kampala and other cities focus on implementing inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban development policies and practices that prioritise access to basic services, affordable housing, efficient public transport, and green spaces.

Policies that will protect natural flood buffers, among other things, will stay largely dysfunctional, and its inhabitants, like Kampala’s case, will continue to be critical, as they were in the run-up to the city’s victory at the World Cities Day China Observance event in Shanghai last November.”

At the event, Kampala won and became the first recipient of the Global Award for Sustainable Development in Cities.

However, several critics and skeptics on social media questioned its chances of victory. However, as the skeptics cast doubt, Dorothy Kisaka, the executive director of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), played optimist, using her X handle to encourage people to vote for Kampala, which won on account of an initiative called Weyonje that seeks to improve sanitation and hygiene across the city.

“Weyonje is without question, a good climate change adaptation initiative. It demonstrates that KCCA is steadily putting into execution the objectives of some sustainable development goals, principally SDG 6, which calls for the “availability and sustainable management of water and proper sanitation for all,” Kisaka says.

In a recent opinion piece for the New Vision, Simon Kasyate, the KCCA spokesperson noted that the Weyonje initiative had significantly reduced environmental pollution.

“It is not a bad idea to implement SDG 6, but with only fi ve years left until 2030, I believe KCCA should focus more on attaining the urban SDG or SDG 11,” Dr Christine Nagawa, a lecturer at Makerere University’s School of Forestry, Environmental and Geographical Sciences, says.

The Urban SDG objectives include creating inclusive, safe, and sustainable cities and human settlements, reducing per capita negative environmental impacts, particularly air quality, waste management, and common access to green and sustainable spaces, among others.

What is needed? 

“To successfully implement SDG 11 and the new urban agenda, collaborative partnerships with public and private sector players are needed. This is reinforced by recent assessments of Uganda’s progress towards the Urban SDG, which have not made for interesting reading,” Nagawa says.

The 2023 United Nations Sustainable Development Report, which discussed urgent areas for action to accelerate progress in the remaining years to 2030, including the critical need for UN member states to adopt an SDG stimulus, for instance, indicated that Uganda had stagnated and faced major challenges in its pursuit of SDG 11.

Vincent Byendaimira, the acting director of physical planning and urban development at the Lands, Housing and Urban Development Ministry, says Kampala and other Ugandan cities, can best achieve SDG 11 by committing to physical planning at all levels.

The country only passed the Physical Planners Registration Bill in 2022. “There must be purposeful implementation of Physical Development Plans (PDPs), perhaps by way of conditional grants to Local Governments and direct central government funding of projects identified in planning processes.

There must also be direct investment in housing to make it more available and affordable,” Byendaimira believes that the $556 million (about sh2.1 trillion) recently passed by Parliament, as well as the anticipated $750 million (about sh2.8 trillion) meant to cover all municipalities and cities, will bring some changes to bear.

Joseph Walter Pade, a commissioner for urban development at the same ministry agrees, stating that prioritisation of physical planning and adequate climate-proof infrastructure development was key.

During a recent session in which Parliament adopted national physical planning proposals by Judith Nabakooba, the minister for Lands, Housing, and Urban Development, MPs from both parties agreed that more effort was needed to implement physical planning policies in Uganda to address issues, such as urban floods, sewage mismanagement and the lack of numbered homes, among others.

Govt Policy 

At last year’s UN Climate Change Conference, Nabakooba said the government was committed to strengthening the urban development agenda, urban financing, and urban greening as part of its policy.

What KCCA is doing

In the run-up to the NAM Summit 2024, the executive director of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), Dorothy Kisaka, disclosed that besides improving the city’s drainage systems, restoring green infrastructure, such as wetlands and prevailing upon people to ensure proper waste disposal, KCCA was working on a 15-kilometer road improvement project to address flood-prone areas, with at least 10 roads fixed.

Through the Greater Kampala Integrated Floods Resilience Partnership Project launched in 2022, KCCA is working on improving Kampala’s flood resilience by adopting nature-based solutions, such as rainwater retention areas (rainwater harvesting).

Kasyate says KCCA is actively working on several green urbanisation projects aware that urban green infrastructure, such as trees, would help mitigate climate change and adapt to its effects by sequestering carbon.

“KCCA is not only maintaining Kampala’s greenbelt but also adding to it through tree planting. We plant over 6,000 trees annually and green on average two acres every year. We also maintain over 330 acres of public green spaces in the city. These measures will reduce climate risks, like urban heat, as well as energy and water demand.” Kasyate said KCCA is working to minimise encroachment, particularly in greenbelts, by ensuring that any new developments are reviewed by the Physical Planning Act and structures that have been built and found to be encroaching are served notices before being demolished by the Development Control team.

In the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023, the UN posited that for countries to achieve Goal 11, efforts must focus on implementing inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban development policies and practices that prioritise access to basic services and affordable housing.