Uganda intends to expand airport terminal at USD200 million

Uganda wants to expand its airport at Entebbe by investing USD400m in the project, 200m of which is intended to go into terminal building. I travel frequently through Entebbe indeed the airport is getting congested especially the departure check-in however that is all. I have earlier written about why we should not revive Uganda airlines. I was the last chairman of the airline and I literally closed it after it had made loses totaling to over USD7m. The background for this loss is another story but it came out as a result an indecision of government. Indeed government cannot do business. Through in my subsequent writings, I have supported government ownership of business especially startup and funding.

Let my friends in CAA not think I am being personal, I am not. I am looking at the big picture as to where do we invest the money. It is possible that for the next three to five years, traffic at Entebbe airport can be handled in the present terminal building. To me what needs to be done is to improve the departure handling, possibly expand the space in the existing building and improve the efficiency of handling passengers. Definitely the cargo area needs to be quickly improved and expanded. It is an eyesore in the airport complex.

In the article that appeared in the East African Business Week of September 1-11, 2014, Paul Tentena who reports on this ambitious project talks about the expansion of Jomo Kenyatta in Nairobi, Julius Nyerere airport and many others in Africa. Kenya has been growing in traffic. If I am not mistaken, its figures maybe possibly 5 times what Uganda handles. It has made improvements in the existing airports and I guess they got onto a stage where they could no longer use the existing airport. They are about to complete a new terminal. According to the 2012 statistics, Kenya’s annual passengers was 6.4m people while Uganda had slightly over 1million passengers in 2013. The investment decision at the national level I guess in the Ministry of Finance and for us to invest as a small poor country, we must borrow. I am sure if the CAA can recover this money, then it is good investment. I am aware of a previous loan of USD 60m which has ben lying somewhere being unpaid. Possibly they have paid it by now.

If I were the PSST, this project would not pass if they do not have capacity to repay the money. The City airport in London (a pretty small airport) has over 3.3million passengers a year. What is the magic? Magic is in efficiency in timing and handling. It is possible we need more investments in the roads, I wouldn’t put my money yet on an expanded airport investing USD 400m.

See Article

MUBS hosts CAPA Conference

MUBS is a member of the Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics in Africa (CAPA) and it concluded its December conference at Imperial Resort Hotel on Thursday December 11, 2014. Attend by over 200 delegates from Anglophone Africa, the conference is one of the two meetings held a year i.e May/June and November/December bringing together technical universities of higher learning, vocational and technical institutions to share experiences, benchmark on teaching and other aspects of quality education in these institutions. The December conference was held under the theme “Competitiveness based education in Africa, the role of TVETs”

The conference was opened on Monday December 8. 2014 with a research methodology training. The training is intended to empower the teachers in these institutions to be able to undertake research. The research training was attended by over 50 people from the participating countries.

In his opening remarks, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Uganda, Ngugu Ruhakana Rugunda thanked the different participants for choosing to come to Uganda and wished them fruitful deliberations. In a speech read for him by the Minister of Education and sports, Hon. Jessica Alupo, the prime minister urged the participants to continue to uphold high quality of TVET education. The conference had over 100 papers covering different aspects of the theme and was held in different parallel sessions. The conference was closed by Prof. Mondo Kagonyera the Chancellor of Makerere University.

Poverty Leads man to strangle wife and Baby.

In a village near Kampala, a man decided to kill his wife and child because he had been evicted from a house he was renting after he failed to pay rent for the house. One Kabango who was staying on the veranda for some time with his wife and child, strangled both when he felt he could no longer contain the situation he was in. it is reported that it was poverty that caused this problem.

These actions reported in the Red Pepper of November 27, 2014 is a sign of things to happen in the years ahead as the unemployment problem continues in the country. Recently, the census revealed that Uganda’s population was about 35million (plus one, me, because I was not counted). Sometime back a girl committed suicide throwing herself down the 26 floors from the NSSF building in downtown Kampala. This is a case of a man killing his wife and strangled his baby “read he had no job” The reports indicate that 70% of Uganda’s population is below 35 years old possibly 50% below 15 years old. This means that more than 50% of the population is unproductive and it must be fed.

Traveling around the country you will not be surprised that nearly every other person you see is idle. Uganda must create jobs and these jobs will not come through government putting emphasis on agriculture. Unfortunately, the complaint is government puts only 2% of its budget on agriculture yet it is the largest employer and is the key to the growth of the Ugandan economy and to addressing unemployment.

I have written on this column and I have said that government should mobilize people to increase production in agriculture. This is the key to unlocking Uganda’s employment potential. Of course increased agricultural production goes hand in hand with infrastructure. If there are no roads, what is produced will remain in the villages. Government therefore must also address the road system. This is a thumbs up for Museveni as he labours to explain why we need agriculture. This will of course give incomes to people who will now demand for other goods and services. Increased incomes may lead to better production methods and possibly increased productivity. This is what will make a change in the lives of the people in this country. Lets therefore not take such actions lightly. They are simply indictors of a problem rather than the problem itself.

MAN KILLS WIFE, STRANGLES BABY OVER RENT

SHOCK  AND grief gripped residents of Nabaziza Zone in Kyengera-Nzangi Sub County in Wakiso, when a poverty-stricken man decided to kill his whole family after he has evicted by his landlords.

The murderous man has been identified as kabango Nsenzi, who was evicted by Toney Muwanga for failure to pay him five months’ rent arrears amounting to Shs250,000.

Eyewitnesses told Red pepper that a week ago, Muwanga (landlord) evicted the couple just two month Kabango’s wife Rachael Naturinda gave birth to their baby by caesarian section.

“The man visibly had nowhere to relocate and when they slept on the verandah for a few days, one kind neighbor sheltered the woman and the baby to protect them from freezing with coldness at night,” a neighbor narrated.

Sources however revealed that the Good Samaritan was forced to throw out the woman and child after Muwanga threatened to evict him from his houses for encouraging defaulters not pay his money’. Lost for solutions, Kabango is said to have resorted to finishing off is family.

 “He came at night with a gauze wire which he used to strangle his wife at the verandah, before proceeding to the baby whom he also tied with the gauze around the neck until it passed out. On being contented that both were dead, Kabango entered the house and tried to hang himself using a necktie,” a neighbor narrated.

By sheer luck however, the tie broke and Kabango landed onto the ground with a thud, which attracted Muwanga to rush and check who had entered his house. He found Kabango groaning. “When I touched the woman, she was already dead while the baby had a gauze wire tied around its neck so I raised an alarm which attracted the neighbor and also informed police about the matter,” Muwanga narrated. Police whisked the baby to mulago hospital while Naturinda’s  body was taken to mortuary for postmortem.

The death however took a controversial twist when some people close to the family confirmed that Kabango’s action was fuelled by poverty while others claimed it was premeditated after he learnt that his wife was sleeping with a colleague he has been working with at Arua Park in the city centre as a taxi tout.        

The nightmare of being a pedestrian in Ugandan towns.

Be it in towns or on highways, being a pedestrian on Uganda Roads or I guess elsewhere “Africa,” is something that requires a lot of mental skills. About 99% of Uganda’s populations walk to work or to buy something on shops. The reason of walking is because they don’t have money to pay for the very expensive transport mainly boda boda which is the main means of transport in the country.

In the areas where buses and taxes cannot ply, you have to travel by boda boda. It is a contradiction because it is the poor who travel by boda boda which is a very expensive means of transport. But they have no choice. Most roads both in county side and urban areas are impassable. Vehicles cannot go there because of the potholes due to poor maintenance. Mass transport which is a bus and train is the main means of transport for the low income earners everywhere in the world, even for the high income earners, they find trains convenient and cheap. Trains never experience traffic jam and therefore very convenient and fast.

Back to the pedestrians. I have walked in the several streets in Kampala and on highways and what have observed is that we drivers, am one of them, have no respect for the pedestrians. Not only do we drive fast, but we are not mindful of the safety of the pedestrians.

The roads in Uganda are very small, in most cases and the road shoulder is used by both the cyclists and pedestrians. Now and again the boda boda people also use the shoulder as they are pushed off from the road by the motor vehicles. The shoulder is also used for parking and when the vehicles breaks down, they park on the same shoulder taking away the space for the pedestrians and forcing the get into the main road where traffic is speeding.

In towns, the situation is worse. Have personally experienced challenges walking on many roads in Kampala especially its suburbs.  This is true anywhere else in Uganda’s towns.

Roads in towns should have sidewalks to enable pedestrians walk with comfort without looking over their shoulder to check that nobody is about to knock/crush them. However, very few roads have sidewalks. In many cases, there is not even space for one. In many of our suburbs, people build their houses without leaving space for roads and worse still they drain their water into the roads. But even organized places like Kololo and Bugolobi the problem is not different. Most of the house owners have planted fences of flowers in the area meant for sidewalks. The pedestrians forced to walk in the narrow roads with the boda boda and motor vehicles coming from in both direction. It requires a lot of mental skill to walk through this confusion.

Thank Jenifer Musis, she has made improvements on Kampala roads. She needs to invoke the law and compel  the house owners in Kampala especially the non slum areas to ensure that they make provisions for sidewalks.

I hope that those house owners who read this article should  voluntarily provide sidewalks in their respective plots.