Kampala’s wetlands have dwindled dramatically in just three decades, shrinking from 3,201 hectares in 1994 to 1,388 hectares in 2024, representing a staggering loss of over 56 percent, a new report shows. The decline of Kampala’s wetlands is not just a loss of land covered by water but a threat to the city’s resilience against flooding, water purification, and biodiversity, according to environmentalists and physical planners. This information is contained in the 2025 Kampala City Wetlands Situation Report, conducted by Subamu Investments Limited, a firm contracted by the government to evaluate the wetlands’ status.
Researchers and government officials attribute the decline to increased human encroachment for settlements, industrial development, and agriculture. They warn that this is exacerbated by weak enforcement of protective laws and inadequate or absent urban planning in rapidly expanding areas. ‘The wetlands in Kampala have largely declined since 1994 to date, and we’ve lost about 2,000 hectares of land to this, a representation of about 56 percent of that total acreage of the wetlands since 1994,’ Dr Ivan Bamweyana, a consultant with Subamu, revealed.
Most affected
Dr Bamweyana said Lubigi is the most affected wetland of the eight in Kampala, with 21,249 buildings, while Namalusu is the least affected because of its aggressive flooding. The wetlands evaluated include Lubigi, Nakivubo, Kinawataka, Kansanga Ggabba, Kalidubi, Walufumbe, Kyetinda and Namalusu.
In an interview , the consultant attributed the loss of wetlands to a combination of factors. ‘There have been major causes: people taking up land to settle there, and people developing industries there,’ he said. ‘This [decline] can [also] be attributed to the population pressure, people requiring new areas to settle, and people being unguided on what a wetland is or being uneducated about what our wetland is,’ he added.
The report indicates that the number of buildings in wetlands nearly tripled, rising from 20,958 in 2004 to 56,679 in 2024. The firm said they used satellite imagery, aerial photography, and field surveys to come up with the report. The KCCA Deputy Director of Land Use Planning and Development, Mr Ivan Katongole, points to the complex issue of land ownership as a key driver. ‘The landholding system vests some wetlands in private hands,’ he said, explaining that many constructions on wetlands are informal and unapproved.
‘Our approval system requires that people should not construct in wetlands, but because of these private holdings, there is informal development of land, where people assume that they’re exerting their right to use the properties that belong to them,’ he added. Mr Katongole also highlights the pressure for urban growth, noting that some wetlands, deemed ‘vanquished’ by a policy committee on the environment, have been approved for industrial development.
‘The other one is the pressure for growth and development of the city, where you find that due to gross growth pressures, some areas have even been formally approved for development,’ he explained. ‘You’ve heard about vanquished wetlands? There is a policy committee on environment which at some point declared some wetlands vanquished, and so often those ones are used for industrial development,’ he added.
Political challenges
Mr Katongole also highlights that political challenges further complicate enforcement, particularly in informal settlements on wetland fringes. ‘We also have the political pressure. It’s very hard to implement some of our development control measures in some of the informal settlements. Most of these are within or on the fringes of wetlands,’ he added. Mr Vincent Barugahare, the assistant commissioner for wetlands at the Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE), blamed poor planning for exacerbating the crisis.
‘In Wakiso, where I stay, there’s no plan. People settle, and the government only intervenes after decades,’ he said. He stressed the need for coordinated planning between Kampala and neighbouring Wakiso to prevent contradictory policies. Mr Barugahare also laments the attitude and orientation of people, adding that many Ugandans prioritise short-term gains over long-term sustainability. ‘In this country, there are two categories of Ugandans: there are those who look at the future, we think about how our children will be but there are those who have read too much the Bible and they think they will get a good life somewhere else, and that is the biggest number. I deal with enforcement but Ugandans are not the right people to deal with,’ he said.
Mr Katongole said KCCA would demolish some of these structures to save the environment. ‘We are going to see that we try to bring some of these structures down, especially those that are in very fragile ecosystems within the city. So, we are not taking this issue lying down,’ he added. The industrial push has further strained wetlands, with developments such as the Namanve Industrial Park encroaching on these ecosystems. Ms Evelyn Anite, while still serving as the State minister for Investment and Privatisation, said the government had resolved that the next industrial park would be built on dry land not wetlands, to protect the environment. Ms Anite is now a senior presidential adviser.