President Museveni commissioning one of the roads constructed under NRM. Commitment by the NRM government towards infrastructure development has opened up many trade and investment opportunities as it has facilitated free movement of goods and services with in the country and the region as a whole.
Trade and investment has sky-rocketed, flying on the wings of a soothing road network connecting the country to its different regions and neighbours.
In 1986, when the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) took power, the country‘s public road network stood at a paltry 987km but has since expanded to approximately 140,000km.
“The Government has always focused on building the country’s road network, and this has never changed. We shall continue to build roads to facilitate the movement of people and their goods as we grow the economy together,” Works Minister, Gen. Edward Katumba Wamala says. Electricity transmission: From 730 to 3,220km
Going down the memory lane in 1948, the former Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) was formed. A year later Owen Falls Dam, Uganda’s first was constructed at a cost of £3.6m (about sh17.33b today).
UEB went on to operate and maintain the electricity value chain from generation, transmission to distribution segments until 1999 when it was unbundled.
The coming to power of the NRM government after a five year guerilla war ushered in a period of relative peace, security and a number of reforms that were aimed at reviving economic activities and growth.
Uganda’s electricity journey has seen the country grow from a single generation plant established in the 1950s to 40 plants. It has grown the generation capacity from 150MW in 1950s to over 1,200MW in 2020.
Over the next 10 years, the Government plans to increase access to electricity in rural areas to 26 per cent of the total rural households,” President Yoweri Museveni said recently during the State of the Nation address.
Museveni’s comments came after the launch of a 10-year Rural Electrification Strategy and Plan (RESP) covering the period between 2013 and 2022 aimed to increase access to electricity in rural areas by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA).
REA is a government institution formed in 2001 to facilitate the provision of electricity to rural areas in an equitable and sustainable manner. REA was established as a result of the energy sector reforms which led to the enactment of the new Electricity Act, 1999.Before the National Resistance Movement (NRM) took over power in 1986, there was hardly any deliberate […]