The still birth of Uganda’s towns

I have been visiting Arua town again and the Arua town is not any different from other towns in Uganda. The old towns had some plans during the colonial government which plans were never realised. Today the towns, including new ones, are struggling to position themselves as towns, contrary to how they are actually developing, are some kind of rural urban slums. The most visible feature of our towns is their disorganistion and the unnecessary crowding despite the available land to meet the growing needs outside the town.

Most of our towns especially the old ones, now have the central commercial districts an industrial area and residential. The commercial area is in the old town and the visible trading units in these towns are supermarkets now largely owned by Indians and Chinese. It is true there are a few sizeable commercial establishments owned by Africans but those in the central commercial district are small businesses or large shops shared by numerous business people. The famous establishment in many of our towns is the lock- up. A lock-up is a progression from the traditional market stall to places where the individual can lock up his goods rather than have the goods in the communal market stalls. In many towns, government has built a large covered market to provide for the growing needs of African businesses. There are such markets for Jinja, Lira, Gulu and other towns.

In Iganga town the beer depot is on the main street defying conventional wisdom of locating such businesses! Here you have large vehicles offloading beer in down town area and smaller lorries loading beers in the process inconveniencing shoppers. But who cares anyway? The tax parks are spread everywhere in towns as taxis load on main roads risking lives of the commuters. When you add the bodaboda traffic you only see chaos on the street and later in the day the markets develop on these streets.

You can imagine the type of town where everything is happening in the same place. Is it that we do not know what to do? Is it there are no rules or there are rules and we have ignored them? We can not modernise our towns if we can not plan these towns. It is also happening in the residential areas of these towns starting from Kampala. The upper end of the market is gone, Kololo, Nakaseero, Bugolobi is now office space!You will also find small stalls selling different things in these areas. People are putting supermarkets in their houses either due to ignorance or defiance of the law.

 Uganda National Roads Authority has put markstones on most of the major roads in the country, even in towns. But the roads in towns are small and can not accommodate the future. In sub-urban areas of most towns roads are pathetic. They are not tarmacked and will not be for the foreseeable future! However, it seems no body is planning space utilization in the towns. It is a little late to save the old towns, they are already condemned into being slums. But there’s an opportunity for those that are expanding think through their space utilization also for those new towns like Mayuge, Luuka that am familiar with to have better plans to build modern towns.