What must we do to save Kampala from becoming a huge modern slum? We need to create clear Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs) for each urban neighbourhood, as the primary guiding tools for urban expansion.
NDPs are a set of well-defined strategies, with respective support policies and action plans that are used in guiding the way cities are planned, developed, and managed.
NDPs are vital tools that help in specifying urban land-uses like infrastructure, housing planning, green spaces, as well as social, and economic development.
NDPs also provide clear action plans that help in addressing key urban challenges like public transport, social inequality, unemployment, environmental degradation, and waste management.
If comprehensively designed, NDPs are critical in addressing urban governance ambiguities, by clearly defining the roles and contributions of different stakeholders within the urban decision-making processes. This consequently leads to efficiency in urban decision-making, further driving urban sustainability.
Despite the benefits associated with NDPs, more than 90 percent of our urban authorities do have such plans to guide urban expansion. Our urban neighbourhoods are growing without clear policy direction and strategy.
For instance, Kisaasi Town has remained a single-street township for years. At the back of the single street, are merely disconnected and inaccessible paths, often ending at people’s gates.
In 2025, KCCA should have developed a well-detailed ‘Kisaasi Development Plan’, a 10-year strategy clearly defining how the township will look in the next 10 years, and the small actions that must be taken to achieve the set goal; or a ‘City Centre Strategy’ outlining the vision and physical set-up of the new downtown Kampala.
Such plans would, for example, help to define whether Nakivubo Channel, would be covered with green spaces or a shopping arcade; or whether new developments should be strictly mixed-use and single-use.
Without clear development plans for such areas, they are likely to remain ugly slums for decades to come.
This absence of a well-defined urban governance process, and a clear policy direction, explains why the President will continue approving development of retail spaces on top of drainage channels, or the minister in-charge of investments will, without shame, allow investors to destroy 150 acres of urban forest land to pave the way for the development of office spaces and shopping malls, worse still, without consulting jurisdictional urban authorities.
Such are clear indicators of a clogged urban governance system that must be overhauled immediately.
Considering the current rate of housing developments, it is likely that by 2050, every plot of land in Kampala will be built up, and non will be a greenspace.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that in 2022, Kampala was rated as one of the most heavily polluted cities in the world; and recently, this newspaper reported, that about five people die every day due to air pollution.
Available data also indicates that over 60 percent of Uganda’s urban population lives in slums, under the most degrading conditions.
The above urban challenges are increasingly being exacerbated by a Laissez-faire urban governance system – that accords overwhelming powers to land owners and developers who often disregard the basic principles of housing development – accessibility, connectivity, sustainability, aesthetic cohesion, and privacy; a corrupt political class that has failed to play its supervision function; an isolated and disempowered urban citizenry; and inactive urban authorities that have largely disengaged from their urban development duties of coordination, regulation, and control.
Successful regeneration of our cities will require clear policy direction, and not impulsive and reactionary responses from politicians, underscoring the urgent need for creating NDPs.