The New Kids on the Block

Before - Kampala in the 60's with the original double-decker 

This month heralded a new dawn in Uganda; the arrival of public buses and the reintroduction of the passenger train some 50 years since they both left Uganda.  Although it may seem strange to many of us living in Europe that the sight of a bus can cause front page news, but here in Kampala the local council, sick to the back teeth of the terrible Matato taxis that swarm around the city from dawn till dusk, have ‘purchased’ 500 bright orange buses from Africa’s new found friend; the Chinese.  What the story behind the price or politics of the purchase may be, at least the main aim of this introduction appears a noble one; undercut the cost charged by the Matato’s and their strangle hold on public transport, and ease the congestion in the city – certainly a good cause. 

With very little fan-fair, or in fact any advertising at all, the buses were launched at the start of March, and if you could track them down, you could ride all the way into the heart of the city for a whopping 25p.  As they were introduced slowly to begin with, all you might glimpse would be a brief orange flash between buildings or maybe the sight of the lesser spotted dazzling blue lights as they swept past you at night.  But now, four weeks on, the city appears to have warmed to them, and much like London buses, they’ve become as common as a rainless day in Kampala.  One difference to London, however, is working out exactly where they are heading; initially due to the lack of route numbers and now just because it appears impossible to find any information on them, but it’s early days yet, and London hadn’t sorted their route maps until a couple of decades ago, so who knows where this might end…the Kampalan Underground anyone?

After - 2012, the new Chinese made fleet

The introduction of them is a far and away a mark of progress in this congested city; one man I spoke to stated that “it’s like being on an aeroplane!”  However on the 120^th anniversary of construction starting on the Uganda-Kenya Railway, I can’t help but look back at all of the great innovations that were installed in Africa by the British and see some small parallels.  Aside from a fantastically well-kept bridge I spotted a few weeks ago on the way to Jinja, the majority have just been allowed to decay and crumble and disappear into obscurity as the weeds devour them.  So what’s to say that in a region with a history of poor infrastructure maintenance, these Chinese built buses, like their British predecessors, won’t find themselves on the same path within the year, broken, rusting and forgotten, rejected by the natives.