It is now official that MV Pamba has made a name for having suffered the most expensive accident in East Africa’s marine history.

At $5m (sh17.8b), the 34-yearold ship will soon touch water again, returning to sail between Mwanza on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, and Kisumu on the north eastern side, after about sixteen years.
Repairs on the ship, done by Mango Tree, a Chinese engineering group, are said to be more than 95% complete, and this week, the ship is expected to leave the dry dock for a test cruise.

A dry dock is a raised platform at the harbour, used to suspend a ship from water, for purposes of repair, reconstruction and maintenance, among others.

For about fifteen years, Pamba was docked at Portbell, following suspension from work, after it collided with MV Kabalega, which remains sunk to-date at the bottom of Lake Victoria.

According to Stephen Wakasenza, the acting managing director of Uganda Railways Corporation (URC), Pamba’s system has been redesigned from manual to digital to improve its efficiency, minimise the likelihood of similar accidents, and to fit-in with modern marine technology.

Wakasenza said the ship has been given two modern turbo diesel engines of 1,000 horse power each, a modern intercom system, two generators, the latest CCTV camera system, and GPS equipment.

“This means we shall need a smaller crew size because everything can be remotely monitored from the cockpit,” he said.

He said unlike the previous throttle (gear), which was manual, Pamba will now proudly boast of a modern digital throttle and an electric suspension system to give it better performance compared to the old hydraulic system.

Wakasenza explained that the Wechi engines, which have been fixed in Pamba, are the most modern, and easy to maintain because their contraction is too low compared to the old ones.

With a belly to swallow 22 train wagons, Pamba will easily carry 880 tonnes of cargo across the lake, sailing to and from Kisumu and Mwanza, at least once a week.

“These 880 tonnes are equivalent to 44 trucks on the road, meaning it will be lifting a big weight off the roads, hence saving the Government billions in repairs and reconstruction of the roads,” Wakasenza said.

According to the state minister for works in charge of transport, Fred Byamukama, the return to sail of Pamba will boost Uganda’s capacity to handle business on the lake, making it possible for the country to position itself as a regional hub for cargo.

He said it will also increase the country’s competitiveness in regional trade, scale-up exports through Kenya and Tanzania to the wider world and increase the stock (in value) of national assets.

“If the traders and manufacturers can take advantage of what we have, we shall see the factors of production adjust because the cost of importing raw materials will go down significantly. We shall also see a spike in exports, because demand for Ugandan goods from the wider world will increase,” Byamukama said.

The minister said discussions to increase the number of ships on the lake were going on, because this will completely reduce the cost of business and increase the country’s attractiveness and competitiveness on the global market.

He added that efforts to retrieve the sunken MV Kabalega from the lake bed are also ongoing and, without revealing details, said: “The company that wants to salvage the sunken ship is seeking permission.”

He added that once Pamba returns to sail, the country is likely to forget fuel shortages that have bedeviled it in the past, because of the possibility of sailing-in up to two million litres from Mwanza and Kisumu.

Uganda’s energy ministry statistics indicate that the country’s fuel imports currently stand at approximately 7.5 million litres every month, meaning that the new system surpasses the current means of transportation.