The Minister for the Presidency, Milly Babalanda, has advised Jinja city leaders to avoid haphazard developments by strictly enforcing physical planning guidelines, so as to sustain the town’s beauty to attract investors. 

Babalanda also emphasised the need for a comprehensive garbage management plan through which residents can be sensitised to appreciate the benefits of proper garbage collection and disposal practices. 

She observed that whereas Jinja is among the best-planned urban centres in the country and boasts of major water bodies in River Nile and Lake Victoria, as well as tourist attractions, its potential was not fully exploited. 

“No one would want to visit or invest in a town that is poorly planned, dusty and stinking,” she said while addressing stakeholders at the second Jinja Business and Investment Summit at the Jinja city hall on Friday. 

Babalanda listens to Mubarak Wasswa who briefed her on their Butumwa coffee processing project at the opening of the summit on Friday. Photo by Jackie Nambogga

The minister counselled that what is considered trash, could be turned into a resource by utilizing it as a raw material for making briquettes and fertiliser, thereby conserving the environment and creating jobs. 

However, the city speaker Bernard Mbayo advised that the government should come up with a deliberate plan for the overhaul of the entire city road network if Jinja is to achieve social and economic transformation. 

Mbayo noted that good roads play a critical role in community transformation and regretted that the city’s budget is too meagre to manage road maintenance. 

“Improving the road network would transform this city overnight but unfortunately, we lack that capacity,” he said adding that the city has a total of 513km, of which 217 are in the central business district with the majority full of potholes. 

He also blamed stagnated development on the lack of publicly owned land by the city and the high levels of fraud at the regional lands offices. 

Here, he revealed that corrupt officials deliberately backdate documents and issue freehold land titles to residents, a situation he said is not ideal for an urban area as it deprives the council of much-needed revenue. 

Mbayo however said efforts were being made to cancel all titles being issued fraudulently. 

Engineer Kenneth Kaijuka, the chief executive officer of the National Housing and Construction Corporation, concurred with Mbayo advising that to aid the growth of investments, urban centres should move from issuing freehold to leasehold titles. 

Mubarak Wasswa from Butumwa coffee processing explaining to Babalanda and other officials as she inspected the stalls during the business summit in Jinja on Friday. Photo by Jackie Nambogga

He added that city leaders must provide incentives such as good and affordable housing, roads, access to water, electricity and internet services to attract investors in addition to the acquisition of land by the city authorities. 

The summit was held under the theme Galvanising Investments and Physical Planning and was organised by the Africa Centre for Economic Dialogue (AFCED) in conjunction with the Jinja City Council. 

Rajab Kitto, the city’s public relations officer accounted that it aimed at providing a platform for public-private corporations, multistakeholder engagement and the generation of innovative ideas, insights and solutions to challenges and opportunities in Jinja city’s ecosystem. 

Also, Kitto explained that the summit was geared at garnering solutions, financing and investment in emerging issues including climate change and rapid urbanisation to attain the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and national development goals in relation to Jinja city. 

Meanwhile, AFCED’s chief executive officer Julius Nsubuga, hailed Jinja City Council for accepting to come up with such an engagement that brings different entities to showcase what they deal with. 

Nsubuga said such platforms help participants widen their clientele base 

The summit attracted exhibitors such as National Housing, bankers, hoteliers, real estate, and youth entrepreneurs dealing in wine production, crafts and cosmetics among others.