KCCA has a grandmaster plan

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WHAT’S UP!

The last two weeks have seen something of a small earthquake in Kampala. The Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) finally showed a bit of its teeth, instead of the empty barking it is largely known for. After giving vendors an ultimatum to leave the city’s streets, it got several hundred armed police officers and actually evicted them.

There have been attempts to evict vendors from the city’s streets before, but many have not been successful. The usual excuses would arise: ‘we have nowhere to go’, ‘there were no consultations’, ‘where shall we get school fees?’; and someone above would halt the exercise until ‘consultations’ have been made. Those consultations would take years, vendors would gleefully flood the streets again, and it was back to business as usual.

Will this time be any different? Kampala is one of the continent’s most congested cities (second only to Lagos, Nigeria), with narrow streets, roads in bad condition, an almost total disregard of traffic laws, and almost half a million totally out of control bodabodas. What does KCCA plan to do about that?

Just before Christmas last year, I had to pick up a printed photograph from the central business district, and got caught up in the weirdest traffic jams I’ve ever encountered. Dozens of bodabodas suddenly appeared on the road just after City Square, in front of Mabirizi Plaza. There were no cars in front us, just bodas facing in all directions, and they were so tightly packed that not even one could move. No cars were involved, just bodabodas.

Apparently KCCA has a ‘master plan’, with a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System, and a Light Rail Transit (LRT). The plan is for the BRT to go from City Square to Banda, Kalerwe, and Kibuye; and the LRT to link Mukono, Kajjansi and Kasangati.

Along with this will be upgrading all the roads, and installing enough traffic lights across the city to make sure everything is kept to order. Sounds grandiose, right?

After evicting the vendors (some of whom were quoted as saying that they would be back after two weeks, and claimed that city officials could not survive without them), KCCA declared they were going to sort out the unruly taxis, who do whatever they like, park in any place they find and had set up illegal ‘stages’ all over the city.

Predictably, the taxi groups and associations complained, said they were not consulted, and had nowhere to go, anyway. Luckily, elections have just ended, so no politician has jumped on that wagon to defend ‘innocent voters’. Thank God for small mercies.

But who is going to bring the KCCA folks back to reality? There is a big cat in this city (and everywhere else in Uganda), and all the city people have to do is ‘bell it’. You know that story about how a community of rats determined that the biggest hindrance to their lives is not knowing when a cat would come for them? And that the best solution would be to put a bell on the cat, so they could hear it coming? Great solution, except now they had to put that bell on the cat. Yeah, not so easy after all.

KCCA might have all the plans it wants, and even get all the funding it takes (seems the World Bank is backing the plans), but there is one problem – the bodabodas. Unless they can control those million-plus little bikes, any plan is dead on arrival.

That pre-Christmas jam I mentioned above involved only bodabodas. So, you may bring all the buses needed, demarcate bus lanes, and set up the LRT system (did someone mention there are plans for cable cars?). But if the bodas continue doing what they are doing, none of those will do any good.

Maybe before spending all those trillions earmarked for the five-year strategic plan, KCCA should have a serious talk with the Uganda Police. It beats my understanding to watch stressed-out traffic police officers try to control unruly traffic, only to ignore the even more unruly bodas creating even more chaos.

Nobody has ever answered my question, do traffic police have express orders not to interfere with bodas? Is it part of their training manuals? Maybe part of those trillions should go into re-educating the Police on how to make bodas obey traffic laws. That would definitely be a beginning.

Another thing, traffic police have to stop overriding traffic lights. Part of the growing road rage in Uganda is caused by a traffic police officer ignoring one line of vehicles for up to 30 minutes, relying on his/her very unscientific reading of the traffic situation.

I’m told that Kampala has a state-of-the-art central traffic control system, which was officially opened on September 3, 2025 and which cost more than sh40b. Apparently, this Traffic Control Centre is the first of its kind in East Africa, and can manage traffic across 30 intersections in the city, using ‘advanced technologies’.

All this money will be wasted (God forbid and it ends up paying for apartment blocks in Najjera and Kira), if the bodas are allowed to operate out of control. Someone in KCCA has to bell that cat.

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