Peak, troughs and people surround Ugandan capital's bus transit plans
Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni is Africa’s third longest serving leader, having been head of state since January 1986. Today, mass transit and public-private partnerships are envisioned in his government’s long-term national development plan. However, project delivery has been more difficult than the consistency of policy and policy makers might imply. Ongoing efforts by local firm, Tondeka Metro Company, and India’s Ashok Leyland to develop a bus rapid transit (BRT) project in the Kampala Metropolitan Area are a case study on relevant stakeholders, processes, risks and opportunities.
Significance – Project, law and politics
About 5.5 million people live in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area that comprises the capital Kampala and two other neighbouring districts namely Wakiso and Mukono.[1] A BRT network has been conceived for the area since 2010 under World Bank guidance. However, Tondeka and Indian vehicle maker Ashok Leyland are already developing a similar project in association with two state-owned enterprises (see table).
Their initial plan was to launch the service in 2020 with about 1,000 buses supplied by Ashok and the military-backed Kiira Motors. But this did not materialise due to uncertainties around ownership, financing, operation and regulation. Subsequent steps have since been inconsistent with the process laid out in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Act 2015. The prescribed steps are that:
1. A contracting authority register the envisioned project with the Ministry of Finance’s PPP unit having appraised its economic costs and benefits.
2. The contracting authority determine the project feasibility, define the roles of private counterparties and determine the PPP structure.
3. Competitive bidding and an eventual agreement for a major PPP, which must then be approved by cabinet and parliament.
Instead, a parliamentary probe in 2020 found that (a) Tondeka and Ashok were seeking financing from the Exim Bank of India for bus procurement to be backed by the Ugandan Ministry of Finance but (b) the ministry’s PPP head told lawmakers that such talks had not begun. The Uganda Development Corporation, linked to the project, also said it did not yet have an agreement with the promoters, and Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago of the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) said he had only been following developments through the media. There has been no clear contracting authority to initiate the process for a PPP.
The inadequate coordination between national and local authorities here is linked to politics. President Yoweri Museveni and the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) are unpopular in Kampala and the two other districts in view, and opposition parties mostly win elections in the area. The Kampala City Council was restructured into KCCA in 2015 to whittle down the elected mayor’s powers and vest more authority in an executive director appointed by Museveni, but this has not improved bureaucratic coordination or the ruling NRM’s electoral performance in the area. Opposition parties swept general elections in the three districts last year, and Bobi Wine of the National Unity Party gained more than 70% of votes in this area when he faced Museveni in that year’s presidential election.
At present, the Ministry of Works and the KCCA are proposing regulations to organise the largely informal public transport system in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area. Proposals include restricting motorcycle taxis (‘boda boda’), introducing scheduled bus services, designating taxi parks and routes and registering all operators. But there are no immediate plans to build new infrastructure such as dedicated lanes and terminals or expand the existing one to accommodate mass transit. This infrastructural development and a BRT system, however, are envisioned in the five-year National Development Plan published in 2020.
For now, there is no specific legislative framework to stimulate the development of a domestic automotive industry – although a Buy Uganda, Build Uganda policy set in 2014 acts as a blanket strategy. Only two major companies are currently active in the automotive sector. Metu Zhongtong was launched in 2019 and does not appear to have the financial capacity to manufacture a large number of buses. The state-owned Kiira Motors, described by one MP as a ‘non-starter’ due its slow development, was established earlier in 2014 but still operates from a factory owned by the army.
Outlook – Automotive and transport
The future of the Tondeka project is uncertain with no clear timeline in view. The development of another BRT network will depend on coordination between local and national authorities. On this note, the KCCA executive director appointed in 2020, Dorothy Kisaka, appears to be more cooperative than her predecessor and this has improved relations with locally elected figures. Even so, President Museveni is the ultimate decision-maker regarding PPPs and his office is the main shareholder in Kiira Motors. This parastatal will therefore feature centrally in the government’s automotive and mass transport agenda. Long-term infrastructural development and legislation will be directed by Museveni.
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[1] Population projections by district 2015-2021 (May 2020). Uganda Bureau of Statistics.
Photo credit: Hassan Omar Wamwayi