Kikuubo: A melting pot of ambition, luck

Nestled in the heart of Kampala, Kikuubo stands as a bustling, vibrant centre where commerce never rests. The sounds that reverberate through its narrow streets — from the calls of street vendors to the honking trucks — form a chaotic symphony that symbolises Uganda’s thriving wholesale and retail trade. For decades, Kikuubo has been a launching pad for entrepreneurs, from ambitious graduates seeking a fresh start to seasoned traders who have found success through persistence, innovation, and sometimes sheer luck.

For the ears, it is a medley of clamours, blares yielding from conversations, megaphones, footsteps, trucks hooting to get through, vendors announcing how competitive their prices are, to men with raspy voices calling out in monosyllables “fasi fasi” (make way) with huge piles of merchandise twice or thrice their height on their heads and shoulders, moving with heavy steps and suppressed breaths as they are pushed against the ground by the weight.

Inside the arcades is not any different, but a simulation of the outside albeit with some semblance of order.

Demanding social distancing in Kikuubo is the equivalent of politely asking Kikuubo to close. It is arguably the heartbeat of wholesale and retail business in Kampala.

Folks clutching onto their bags, and pockets, and moving with a sense of alertness as if one was swimming in shark-infested waters.

Who is in Kikuubo?

Denis Kamukama, a software engineer, worked 80 hours a week in formal employment but realised the hours he put in were not commensurate with the pay.

He had relatives in Kikuubo that had mastered the ropes of business and so, he sought them out as he plotted to divorce practising his profession. As you read this, he is in Kikuubo cloaked in a corner shop crammed with bedsheets, towels, curtains, duvets, and bed covers, sitting behind a desk, recording sales as he negotiates with customers.

He argues that business is normally the last resort for many graduates who fail to find employment and those who are underemployed/underpaid. And once they figure out the mechanics of navigating Kikuubo, they permanently cut ties with the formal sector.

“After university, people fail to find jobs. They are all over town and it is hard for them to go back to formal employment. Here you are not on a fixed salary, what you put in is what you get back. You have to be innovative because when you look around, you see similar products. Keep on your toes, know the prices of your competition and why they are like that, why your customers are not returning. Unlike a job when you get terminated you look to apply for another but here when you fail, where do you go?” Kamukama observes.

He adds that young people are quite entrepreneurial because they are the majority in Kikuubo and many have succeeded regardless of their level of education.

Some progressed from loaders/turn-boys to owning shops with minimal to no education at all. Meanwhile, he also notes that many have failed in Kikuubo and left.

Many parents who have outgrown the hustle of the lane have swiftly relinquished management to their children. Some children who took over from parents have succeeded while some have driven the businesses to obscurity.

To succeed in Kikuubo, according to Kamukama, is 60% luck. The rest, he argues, is entrepreneurship skills essentially in negotiation and customer retention.

Arafat Ssembogo, a teacher, quit his job after four years of realising that the time, energy and resources he invested did not match the gains.

As a primary teacher, Ssembogo was paid sh120,000 per month and only during the school term. In December 2015, after three years of mobilising resources, he logged in to Kikuubo Lane armed with sh5m.

He gambled on three shelves at a shop he was offered to co-rent with other traders. With each shelf at 180,000 per month, he parted with sh540,000 for a month. His choice of merchandise was children's play toys. He later expanded to personal effects like toothbrushes, brushes, handkerchiefs, and more.

“I chose to sell toys and not eats because they don’t have expiry dates. You can have your stock for more than a year. Unless they break but if they haven’t, you can keep. Juice for example and other goods are seasonal. After children going back to school, you might find next week there are no buyers. I am here to retain customers. You specialise and study the market,” explains Ssembogo.

The teaching bug tickled him a bit in 2016.

He went and taught for a week in Kyotera. Then a friend he confided in reminded him of how long it took him to raise capital for the business he now wanted to leave in another person’s hands in its infancy. And compounded by the fact that the person was not very interested in running it, Ssembogo returned to Kikuubo.

Challenges

High taxes and high rent are some of the most prominent challenges. Rent in Kikuubo for one willing to co-rent will part with more than half a million per month, to a small shop that is in the neighbourhood of sh1m, to an average shop that will cost close to sh3m.

Being a nomad from co-renting aside, there is a monopoly of stock if you are sharing a shop.

Normally, the owner of the shop takes on stocking all the on-demand products and the tenants co-renting take on the small ones that are not on-demand and with little profits.

Jackson Tusingwire, a trader, has been at it for 20 years and observes that the number of people has increased, and so has the variety of merchandise. The result has been reduced profits. Products that fetched high profits have dropped exponentially.

And counterfeit bank notes are a challenge too. Ssembogo notes that some customers that are bulk buyers will pay sh1m and stick in some fake notes in between, pretend to be in a hurry and leave. This is very common in busy periods like December.

Baptism in Kikuubo business

Newcomers in Kikuubo get baptised into the competitive culture of the place with barbs. From having to co-rent and deal with its frustrations to having to deal with shop brokers, and also having some making attempts to frustrate you by making access to your shop difficult; putting their merchandise on the way leading to the competitors' shop.

Worth noting is that Ssembogo shifted shops from 2015 and until 2024 in March when he settled in his own shop that he does not co-rent and now operates with his wife. He moved from shop to shop with some being sold on goodwill.

With some of the new owners not wanting tenants, sometimes they decided to decongest their shops and so he got ejected. And that is the story of many starting out in Kikuubo.

“In 2016, the first shop was sold on goodwill and the new owner didn’t want tenants. I left for the shop opposite; all my money was in stock. In 2017, I was forced out because they were decongesting.

In 2018, they asked anyone without four shelves or more to leave the shop. I had three so I was forced out. In 2019, they sold the shop again on goodwill and I moved out,” he recollects.

This created instability in his business and he couldn’t retain customers. The same year fire gutted the building that had their store and some of his stock got destroyed while others sustained minor damages.

What sustains Kikuubo?

If you are used to shopping at the neighbourhood supermarket, shops by the roadside in the city centre, paying less by over 50% on a normal day in Kikuubo is how you start counting how many years you have been overpaying for merchandise. Such is the magnetic pull that has caused many traders in South Sudan and DR Congo to buttress many businesses there.

Some traders recount that in the past, with many of the customers from those neighbouring countries buying in bulk, even those with less capital managed to extend the frontiers of their business exploits with bits of negotiation skills to boot. That was how Ssembogo carved himself a niche in the play toys business.

“You get a sample of a product, display it. They come and ask for 100 pieces. You ask them to pay, get a receipt, sit around and you run to the person who has it in bulk. You can make a profit of sh300,000 from one customer without using your own capital. I did it for the whole of 2016 with my three shelves,” explains Ssembogo. Those he says came once in two to three weeks but he has since stopped receiving them at his shop.

Like Kamukama, Ssembogo stresses luck as a factor that determines success and failure in Kikuubo because both can happen within a short time.

Kamukama states that customers come from all over Kampala and beyond to get stock for retail. South Sudan and DR Congo traders still buy from him in numbers.

Sam Muyomba, the spokesperson Kikuubo Business Community concurs with Ssembogo on capital in Kikuubo.

He argues that a huge percentage of the traders come with little to no capital but learn the mechanics of business in the lane and navigate their way to the capital.

“More than 80% of the people here came without capital. They get it here. However, this generation has come with the challenge of untrustworthiness. Those days people trusted and supported each other. Today, some are looking to exploit others,” he contrasts.

The history

Muyomba prides in being around Kikuubo from the time it was an aspiring business hub to the humming human enterprise it is today.

The first arcade in Kikuubo, he says, was called Capital Arcade but was demolished later with another built in its place. And the oldest building was called Rafiki.

“I came here in 1986 as a young man. So, most of these changes unfolded when I was around. I was young, going to school in the morning, and coming here in the evening. In the 1980s, Kikuubo was a short stretch. Ben Kiwanuka Street and Nabugabo formed part of the neighbourhood. There were stores for Indians on one end of the lane. They would offload goods here and then take to the retail shops along William Street and others. They had cotton machines and an area where they sold timber here,” Muyomba recalls.

He also vividly remembers the prominent names that built the brand of Kikuubo and how goods imported from Kenya found their home in Kikuubo first before going to retail.

“When the National Resistance Army took over, many traders here used to go to Kenya to import products like wheat, cooking oil, sugar and soap.

Mzee Serugo of Nansana, Ssebugwawo, Karim and Ssempa are the people that built Kikuubo. Then changes started happening; Mukwano started supplying soap, sugar but people would still go to Kenya because local capacity was still lacking,” he narrates.

The imports from Dubai started trickling in the 1990s. The Kikuubo of today with its brand and character, Muyomba says, started in earnest in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Like Tusingwire who has been in Kikuubo for 20 years, Muyomba also observes that profits have dropped across the board because of the large number of people that have joined business.