15 January 2025.
By, Isaac Senabulya.

The Minister of State for Kampala Capital City Authority and Metropolitan Areas, Kyofatogabye Kabuye has said it is about time the Government stopped massaging Ugandans and instituted changes in the law that would allow compulsory acquisition of land for public projects if the country is to develop and make its transport system motorable for all users.
He made the remarks while appearing before Parliament’s Presidential Affairs Committee, where he had led a team of officials from KCCA to present the 2025/26 Budget Framework Paper proposals.
“The impediment on the existing road corridor is the land question. Unless when we provoke, I raised this thing somewhere, and everyone was telling me, Kyofa, if you want to lose an election speak about this. Government must wake up and say enough is enough. This business of appealing and kneeling. If I want a road here, let me break the thing and put the road and come what may,” said Kyofatogabye.

His remarks were in response to concerns raised by Muhammad Nsereko (Kampala Central) who castigated KCCA for ignoring the housing crisis in Uganda, wondering why the Authority doesn’t emulate Nairobi that embarked on resolving the housing crisis, warning that if the 2million housing deficit isn’t addressed, it will balloon into a bigger crisis.
Nsereko said, “We have a deficit in housing. When you go to Nairobi you can see what they have done that there is a robust plan to enhance housing not only to solve the problem of deficit of houses but also as a source of revenue. Assuming we had a plan of raising low-cost houses of about 10,000 and create these Public-Private Partnership where Government guarantees by granting land and private individuals working with KCCA come and rent these houses to mitigate the cost of rent at a low cost and in another way, trying to pay their mortgages.”
The Kampala Central MP further argued that although such a project would create a huge funding gap but at the end of the day, such a project would have solved a much bigger problem like the current housing deficit of over 2 million units.
“So where is the Ministry of Kampala and Metropolitan in planning for this surge in population with the rural-urban migration but also plan for where people will stay, but in tandem with aspirations of raising revenue. The same goes to the working space. But at the end of the day what we did in the cities, huge mistake, was to lease all the properties in the cities to private players. At the end of the day, we have failed to control the property prices in mainly rent. So, we have distorted the entire thing, so KCCA owns nothing,” added Nsereko.

Although Minister Kyofatogabye welcomed Nsereko’s proposal, he admitted that it is the same idea the technical people have only that such a plan can’t be implemented due to the mistakes made by the old leaders at Kampala Land Board that went on rampage and leased land and properties initially owned by Kampala Capital City.
He noted, “What we did here, we wasted our resource, the land which was here in Kampala which was vested under Kampala District Land Board, all places were sold. In fact, your ideas are our ideas, even the concept we develop can’t work. That is why I have been there struggling, they have been asking me, why don’t you have Secondary Schools? I don’t have land; all land was taken.”
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