Uganda has a total road network of about 159,366km comprising 20,854km (13%) national roads; 38,603km (24%) district roads; 19,959km (13%) urban roads and 79,947km (50%) community access roads.
The national roads link border posts, airports and ports to each other as well as to the capital city. District roads link district headquarters to the national road network and sub- county administrative centres. Urban roads are within the boundaries of urban areas, while community access roads are those within villages that link communities and provide access to administrative, social and economic services.
The road network of our country has tremendously expanded and improved. At independence in 1962, Uganda had only 844km of tarmac roads. Although the post-independence Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) government extended tarmac roads to new towns such as Mbarara- Kabale, Mbarara-Fort Portal, and Kampala-Gulu-Lira, the road network had collapsed by the time NRM took power in 1986. At the time, there were only about 1,000km of paved roads, most of which were in poor condition.
By the end of 2019, NRM had tarmacked a total of 5,500km of national roads and rehabilitated the old 1,000km. By the end of 2020, we shall have added another 500km, thus making a total 6,000km of tarmacked national roads. Our long-term target — enshrined in Uganda Vision 2040 — is to achieve an average of paved road density of 100km per 1,000sq.km by the year 2040.
The stock of the paved road network continues to increase, a result of the well thought out decision to prioritise road construction. During the past term 2016-2021, we allocated over Ush22,935 billion to infrastructure development — roads and bridges (8% more than the planned allocation). Overall, the works and transport sector has received, on average, 17% of the national budget during the last five years.
Although in the past we have focused more on expansion of the national paved road network to cover the huge infrastructure gap, over the next five years we are going to balance construction with maintenance of existing and newly paved roads. We are going to operate the Uganda Road Fund (URF) as a “Second Generation Fund” (2G Road Fund) to finance routine and periodic maintenance of our roads. The URF will get revenues from road user charges, including fuel levy, licence fees and other road-related charges as listed under 21 of the URF Act. This will enable us reduce the replacement costs of roads in future. URF will develop a comprehensive multi-year road rehabilitation and road maintenance plan to guide resource allocation in line with best practice.
We are also going to support competent local contractors to actively participate in road construction and maintenance, in line with the local content policy. The road construction/ maintenance equipment we bought from Japan is being used to maintain the existing roads in good condition and to open up roads connecting new districts. The big national and inter-district roads have already connected many of the sub-counties and town councils in Uganda.