On Friday July 8, I attended a Business Summit in Entebbe Town at Peniel Beach Hotel, the

Uganda National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Entebbe branch and was discussing how
to make Entebbe a better city. This was the fourth summit, meaning that there has been an
attempt in the last 3 years to see that Entebbe is developed as a decent city. Are there results?
Well, yet to be seen.

In my presentation i raised issues from my personal experience visiting various cities and also a
bit of research on how cities grow. Unfortunately, Uganda will be a Big Slum in the next 10-15
years if action is not taken now to stop the current unplanned growth. Without any direction,
without any planning, our destiny is cities of slums. This will lead to additional issues including
theft, insecurity, prostitution and all those issues related to the growth of slums.

What I picked from the discussions is that all Ugandan cities need to plan but today there is only
emphasis on growth of business not how the town itself should grow. Cities and towns need to
plan their future. They should be able to see how they can demarcate different areas of the city or
town to accommodate the commercial district, the industrial district, residential-both low and
high income, recreational and even how to locate the roads.

What is happening today is that there appears to be no plan at all in most of the cities. Where
plans exist, they are limited by the land ownership system, corruption and other factors. The
roads are small and congested. Traffic jam is horrendous Even the towns are small and
congested. Everything happens everywhere. The informal sector is busy on all the streets in all
the towns and definitely there is need to see that this comes to an end if the country is to be
neatly planned and cities grow well.

The confusion in our cities is attributed largely to the land ownership system in Uganda. Other
than Buganda and a few other areas, there is no titled land and this gives the audacity to whoever
owns land to sell different plots or different sizes to anybody who wants to buy. This creates that
problem of not planning for roads and everybody building anywhere, any type of house. Poverty
is another problem people don’t have money to build decent houses.

Some of the cities that have grown elsewhere in the world have made sure that high income areas
are located different from low-income areas. So is industry and other. There is even the estates
development effort in some of these cities.

Peter Latigo July 11, 2022

The other problems that we have is the absence of a road system. The theory of growth of cities
is that the transport system will determine how the city grows. Available means of transport
enables towns to grow out. But small roads constrain the growth. Today, Uganda’s roads are so
small that the only small vehicles to pass there are the boda bodas and the small cars. You
cannot have buses, trains or trams plying in our towns because the roads are small. As the cities
extend outside, the issue of transportation becomes very crucial. Unfortunately, none of our
roads is being planned to take on a larger number of vehicles and traffic. The current repair of
the Mukono-Bweyogeree road should have taken into consideration possibly up to six lanes but
the same old single lane that will continue to grow the jam that we see in the town today.

I hope that somebody somewhere can plan the cities, and another person creates the law and
another person implements the law properly for the benefit of our town and the benefit of the
future generation in this country.

Peter Latigo July 11, 2022