Kibirige’s transport solutions led the way for EAC to follow suit
In the mid 1990s, BMK imported about 200 motor bikes and gave them on credit you young men in Kampala who were riding manual bicycle taxis. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGA
It is difficult to remember when Uganda last mourned an individual so unanimously like it did last weekend when businessman Bulaimu Muwanga Kibirige (BMK) passed away in Nairobi, where he had relocated for a year because of the critical medical care facilities that he needed to battle terminal cancer. But Nairobi was also BMK’s other home because he had lived for several years in the Kenyan capital where he made his critical breakthroughs that helped him lay an unshakable foundation for his business empire.
BMK was in his late teens in the early 70s when the expulsion of Indians from Uganda all but destroyed the economy, making the country reliant on Kenya for most manufactured goods, and the young Kibirige practically spent most hours everyday on the buses between Kampala and Nairobi ferrying goods for the Ugandan market for several years. When he went global and started travelling to Asia, Uganda with still under military rule, he always booked his round flights starting and terminating at Nairobi because travelling from Uganda then required special clearance which he would never have got to go to a multiplicity of countries in overseas.
