Travel to Zambia

I traveled to Zambia on these weird 5:00am flights through Nairobi. I hate that flight because you do not sleep if you have something to clear in the evening before you travel. I have been to Lusaka twice, this is my third time .Zambians are quite different thanks to the times of Kaunda. My impressions of Zambia have always been that they are very organized. 

As a poor country you see order, not the chaos that is spread throughout Uganda as a result of our land ownership system and its respect for law. In Uganda, everybody wakes up in the morning, builds a house without a plan and makes it face anywhere. The next day another person will build and will have his pit latrine next to your sitting room. Even in kololo today developers would use all the space in the plot just to maximize the space they own and in the process the residential area in the country has turned into a real income housing marketing. Of course it still has it name but the glamour is gone. The problem is enforcement of laws. We have very many good laws on the books but few are implemented. Uganda’s ranking as an investment country is agley affected by the inability of the country to enforce laws. What strikes you in Zambia, Lusaka is the fact that people should abide by the laws. If you drive in Uganda our crazy driving techniques do not work in Lusaka. There is respect for one another on the road; there is respect of those who have the right of the way. The bad driving doesn’t work in Lusaka they are decent guys. One of the striking features of Lusaka is the planning of roads unlike our chaotic Kampala. While there is no much glamour of wealth, the city is well planned, it has more wide roads than Kampala, and where the roads are not constructed, the plan for them is there. 

In Uganda we have lost opportunities to plan wide roads and yet we had it. Look at the Entebbe Kampala highway most of the built-up area on this road, wouldn’t exist if we had planned 20 years back. Well that opportunity is gone. We have to live in a chaotic city and the narrow roads. But probably one the of the most important things Zambia has had is to have organized grave yards both in town and in rural areas. They don’t bury people on small plots of land. Every body goes to the grave yard. The more wealthy people go to a place where they charge you more rather than scatter everywhere in the country. Uganda needs to think about this.