Why Juba will resemble a Ugandan town in 20 years

trueBy Simon Mone

Once in a while, I network with friends who work in South Sudan’s capital, Juba. A number of them work with non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Others are engineering contractors.

They often travel to Kampala to procure building materials. As it is hard to find all required materials locally, Kampala is the nearest place for them to find everything that they need.

This means according to these chaps that, a significant volume of construction materials used in South Sudan projects come from Uganda. Contractors buy cement, paint and steel products among other stuff.

Reason, project managers operating in the vicinity of Juba find it easier to access materials from Uganda. As road surfaces are better.

Transport is readily available to facilitate easy movement of goods and services between Kampala and Juba. And it is now safe to move to Uganda at any time. Alternatives like Khartoum and Addis Ababa are miles away and insecure, making business less viable. And also, relationship between Juba and Kampala is: socially, politically and economically healthy.

But with South Sudan’s neighbour in the north, it is non-committal. Therefore, for cordial cooperation, Juba is always going to look at the East African Community and Ethiopia.

As a result of the proximity, at least two things possibly create suspicion that Kampala is beginning to exert some bit of influence on the scenery of some urban centres in South Sudan.

To start with, when you move within Juba town, you get excited by what you see. Structures look similar to those found in a typical Ugandan town.

Like Jinja, Mbale or Gulu, many basic box-shaped one and two-storey buildings are coming up in Juba. In the outskirts, you spot groups of huts. Similar arrangement: design, colour, shape, materials and quality seem to have been imported by Juba.

You can’t resist the temptation of thinking that building planning and lifecycle management follows a similar pattern to those of Arua, Mbarara or Masaka. For over 20 years, Uganda has been home to many Sudan nationals.

Most have gone through Uganda’s education system. And after 17 or 18 years, they graduate. On top of that, Uganda’s technical colleges have provided them with artisan skills training. Upon return home, they output similar products as that of their Ugandan counterparts. Other than the skills, many Ugandan nationals live and work in South Sudan.

While there, they mirror same practices, using same building standards. This is one feeling why some Juba buildings seem to be replicas of Uganda ones.

More a case of “bedo inget bye oweko pura kume kwar”, literary meaning that, living very close to an ant-hill makes the bush buck adopt a brown colour.

This validates the first lingering suspicion. Secondly, there are similarities in the service sector. Before the war, thousands of motorcycle taxis, popularly known as “boda-bodas” were introduced in Juba. “Boda-boda”, the quick means of transportation used in Uganda have become a popular mode of transportation in Juba.

With all the disorganisation attached to it, reflects a typical Ugandan city. Slow simulation of culture from Kampala to Juba. The young graduates have copied Kampala’s lifestyle and pasted it in Juba. So you see!

The notion that Juba is a replica of a Ugandan town is alive. And with this trend continuing, 20 years will confirm Juba as an “attachment” to a Ugandan city.

Only advice is, authorities in Juba should copy and paste carefully. Otherwise, they will end up in a situation of having to deal with a poorly planned Juba. Copying should consider only best practices, ones that will work. One size certainly does not fit all in this case.

The writer is a civil engineer