After gaining independence in 1962, Uganda quickly formalised its relationship with the World Bank, only for the bank to unexpectedly end it on their 60th anniversary.
Imagine a couple whose marriage has produced many children celebrating their golden jubilee (50th anniversary) with divorce!
The World Bank and Uganda did better (or worse) – celebrating their Diamond Jubilee by parting ways. Yet diamond symbolises strength, durability and enduring value.
Uganda officially joined the World Bank group in 1963 after a decade-long courtship in which the bank had funded game changing Owen Falls power dam that Queen Elizabeth II switched on in 1954.
After independence in 1962, Uganda couldn’t wait to formalise its relationship with the World Bank just months later. Then without warning, the bank called it quits for their 60th anniversary.
Was Uganda taken by surprise? Yes. For while the bank all along knew its weakness in financial management – the blow came not as a warning but a notice on August 8, 2023, cutting funding citing Kampala’s new anti-homosexuality law.
Of course, a relationship with a bank that excludes finance doesn’t exist, unless the bank will be running Uganda’s school football tournaments.
Uganda as a member must have known the bank’s values of inclusion and non-discrimination, but had been under the illusion that such a drastic measure could only ever be taken over the core business of the relationship.
Ugandans wouldn’t have been shocked if World Bank had cited corruption; even President Yoweri Museveni has publicly said evidence of collusion in Treasury with Parliament to steal public funds exists.
So deep had the Uganda-World Bank relation grown that a year after separation, a major project that had been in the works has been launched.
Like a couple who after signing their divorce find that there was a bun in the oven, both Kampala and Washington are somewhat happy to welcome the baby - the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area (GKMA) project, which is set to produce one of the world’s largest cities.
To understand the accuracy of this assertion, one needs to understand what has been happening over the past 39 years since Museveni stormed Kampala in 1986 after years of fighting in the bush.
When the city still stood on the seven hills colonialist Captain Frederick Lugard founded it and hoisted the Union Jack on in 1890. Today Kampala stands on 77 hills and still counting.
People who knew Kampala in the 1980s can understand the unguided construction boom unleashed by Museveni’s arrival.
By 1986, for example, many wealthy families that had fled the massacre around their farms had been living in small car garages belonging to civil servants who had no cars.
With the new Museveni era marked by security and economic revival, they couldn’t wait to build new nice homes around Kampala. And they built and built.
Everyone got obsessed with building on the space nearest to them that has not been bought by someone else until the whole central region is fast becoming a construction site because of the location of GKMA which accounts for two-thirds of the country’s GDP and tax collection.
In 2013, government and consequently World Bank woke up to the need to catch up with the ordinary people.
In absence of official physical plans (or disinterest in observing them where they exist) people have been building anywhere and everywhere.
Kampala is now growing far beyond its gazetted 200 sq kms or so to about 6,640 to include Wakiso, Mpigi, and Mukono districts.
With the inevitable expansion targeting the remaining Kayunga and Buikwe districts to firmly engulf Jinja city, GKMA Kampala will soon be 9,534 sq kms, call it 10,000 if you include the exotic Lake Victoria islands that are becoming weekend playgrounds for the city middle class.
Ten thousand sq kms is not far from the biggest real city we know called New York at 12,093 sq kms (any bigger cities are so-called because of administrative boundaries but not the criteria of a city being a densely populated urban hub of economic and cultural activities, interconnected with transport infrastructure and playing important roles in international affairs).
To its credit, government knew the huge future metropolitan transport needs and plotted futuristic industry starting with creating a local automotive industry starting with manufacturing of zero-emission buses and investing in electricity generation capacity.
When the World Bank is done supporting 10,000 sq kms city, I see our government replicating and connecting up with its 10 other “cities by legislation” located around the country that have been (in)operational since being instituted five years ago.
"And when another five cities become (in)operational anytime now, Uganda will be on the road to join Vatican and Monaco as a city state, and the largest in the world at 242,000 square kilometres. Not a bad parting gift from the World Bank, as we mumble “...was nice knowing you...: to Bretton Brothers.
Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. Email: buwembo@gmail.com