Kampala, Uganda

Kampala is the capital of Uganda and the nation’s administrative, economic, and political center. Although Kampala’s history dates back to the late nineteenth century, when the city served as a key outpost of the British imperial presence in Africa, it was not declared Uganda’s capital until 1962. Both Kampala’s physical infrastructure and its social fabric suffered severe damage during the brutal dictatorships and guerrilla warfare that terrorized the nation from 1971 through 1985. Kampala continues to struggle with many of the problems common to urban areas in the developing world. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, it has rebounded to the point where Kampala now enjoys a reputation as one of southern Africa’s safest and most politically stable cities.

Landscape

Located at 0.19 degrees north and 32.25 degrees east, just 42 kilometers (26 miles) from the equator, Kampala lies in the southern portion of Uganda, on Lake Victoria’s northern shore. The city is built on hilly terrain, with its greater metropolitan area spilling over 200 square kilometers (80 square miles).

Kampala’s urban center is concentrated on the Nakasero hill and its tiered layout reflects the capital’s social divisions. The upper portions of the hill consist of wealthy residential districts. The imposing, gated homes of the city’s elite are interspersed with key government buildings as well as the capital’s finest hotels, foreign embassies, and international aid organization headquarters.

The overcrowded lower portions of Nakasero hill, by contrast, feature bustling streets that reflect both Kampala’s vibrancy and problems. The thriving shops, street markets, street vendor stalls, low-end motels and eateries attest to the city’s economic growth during the past two decades. However, the slum neighborhoods and the presence of large numbers of street children are evidence of Kampala’s ongoing struggles against poverty.

Kampala’s population growth has led to the development of shantytowns, where the lack of indoor plumbing, potable water supplies, and trash collection has created a public health crisis. In particular, the unsanitary conditions have triggered a number of cholera outbreaks since the late twentieth century.

In 2007, the Ugandan and Belgian governments embarked on a joint five-year campaign aimed at building roads, drainage ditches, sanitary facilities, and water lines as well as planting thousands of trees in some of Kampala’s worst slums. The goal is to make these areas more habitable for residents and attractive to outside investors.

As a result of its proximity to the equator, Kampala has a tropical climate. The heat is moderated, however, by the city’s altitude of 1,220 meters (4,000 feet). Temperatures typically range from the lows around 18 degrees Celsius (65 degrees Fahrenheit) to highs of 31 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit).

Uganda has been affected by climate change. The city has higher temperatures; unpredictable, intense rainy seasons; and erratic flooding. The temperature has increased 1.50 degrees C over the last fifty years. These changes cause food insecurity among the city's most vulnerable residents.

People

According to the US Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, Kampala’s population was 3.846 million in 2023. The residential population is further swelled by an influx of an estimated 3 million daily commuters.

Ugandan society as a whole features multiple ethnic groups, and this diversity is reflected in the nation’s capital. The large majority of the population is either Roman Catholic or Anglican; Muslims and practitioners of traditional spiritual customs make up a small proportion of the population.

Since 1962, when Uganda achieved independence, English has served as the country’s official language. English is used in the capital’s education system, legal community, most newspapers, and some radio programming.

The language with the greatest number of native speakers in Kampala is Luganda, a member of the Bantu language family. Luganda existed exclusively as an oral language until the middle of the nineteenth century, when European missionaries wrote down phonetic renderings of it to communicate better with the indigenous people.

Economy

Kampala’s economy experienced two decades of rapid expansion after the 1986 election of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni as Uganda’s president. Museveni’s efforts to renegotiate foreign debt, privatize the economy, rebuild critical infrastructure destroyed during years of civil strife, and encourage the growth of ecotourism paved the way for substantial foreign investment in Kampala.

Kampala’s economy has been buoyed in particular by the return of many of the Asian entrepreneurs and investors forced into exile from Uganda in 1972 by the dictator Idi Amin. Amin deeply resented the powerful influence of these entrepreneurs, whose ancestors had been laborers who migrated from India to Uganda during the British colonial era to construct the country’s railways. Although they constituted less than one percent of Uganda’s population, they came to control much of Kampala’s economic life.

Kampala’s formal workforce is dominated by civil servants, small-business owners, and employees of the banking and hospitality industries. Kampala’s industrial sector is focused primarily on the processing of agricultural products. While the production of coffee, tea, sugar, and cotton remains the backbone of the economy, the capital’s growing manufacturing sector also turns out cement, paint, and other construction materials as well as soap, domestic wares, and processed beverages and foodstuffs.

A large number of Kampala’s residents work in the informal economy, as is reflected in the capital’s thriving open-air markets and numerous street vendors. According to Amos Ngwomoya, reporting for the Daily Monitor (2021), 55 percent of those in Uganda’s informal sector work in Kampala. One of the fastest-growing components of the informal economy is urban agriculture. Many members of the rural population who have migrated to the capital are tapping their expertise in growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock, particularly poultry, even after they become city dwellers. Ngwomoya also reported that Kampala's economy generates approximately 60 percent of Uganda's gross domestic product and is responsible for 80 percent of Uganda’s industrial sector.

Landmarks

Kampala features a number of celebrated religious buildings, including the Namirembe Cathedral, also known as St. Paul’s Protestant Cathedral. Located on the hill of the same name, Namirembe Cathedral’s history traces its origins to 1877 when Protestant missionaries first arrived in central Uganda.

The original eight-hundred-seat cathedral was built in 1890 using traditional methods and materials such as reeds, wooden poles, and grass thatch. Only four years later, however, this structure was wrecked by a storm. Two subsequent replacements were destroyed as well. In 1910, work began on the current building, which was completed in 1919. The cathedral overlooks the capital.

Also dating to the early twentieth century is the Rubaga Cathedral, sometimes known as St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral, whose imposing edifice overlooks Kampala center from Rubaga hill, adjacent to the one occupied by its Anglican counterpart. A Muslim mosque sits atop Kibuli Hill, while other Kampala religious buildings of note include the African continent’s sole Baha’i temple, as well as a Hindu temple.

Religious tolerance has had a complicated history in Kampala, however. The Namugongo Martyrs’ Shrine, on Kampala’s outskirts, commemorates some of the Christian martyrs executed between 1885 and 1887 by King Mwanga. Many pilgrims from throughout Africa journey to Kampala each June 3, a national Ugandan holiday, to make observances of those killed.

Four royal tombs, contained within a former palace of the kabakas, or kings, of Buganda, are another key Kampala landmark. Converted into a royal burial place in 1884, the Kasubi Tombs lie within a huge, circular, domed building traditionally fashioned out of wood, thatch, reed, wattle, and daub.

Other noteworthy Kampala attractions include the Uganda Museum, founded in 1908, which features exhibits of traditional culture, archeology, history, science, and natural history, as well as a collection of traditional musical instruments which visitors are allowed to play. The Nommo Art Gallery, which is also known as the National Art Gallery of Uganda, showcases the work of local and regional artists. Colorful markets such as the Nakasero fruit and vegetable market, one of the largest of its kind in East Africa, and the Owino market, noted for its trade in secondhand clothing, are also worth visiting.

History

The original settlement of Kampala occupied seven hills—Mengo, Rubaga, Namirembe, Makerere, Kololo, Nakasero, and Old K’la—although the modern capital is spread out over more than twenty hills. The site of present-day Kampala had traditionally served as the place where the king of the Buganda Kingdom held his royal court.

In 1890, Captain Frederick Lugard of the Imperial British East African Company established both the East Africa Company’s corporate and the British Protectorate’s administrative headquarters on the hill opposite that occupied by the Buganda royal court. Lugard’s fort settlement on Old K’la soon spilled down its slopes to the surrounding hills.

In 1894, the British colonial authorities transferred their administrative structure to the city of Entebbe. Upon its achievement of independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, Uganda reestablished Kampala as its national capital.

Kampala’s proud reemergence was soon overshadowed by the atrocities committed by a succession of dictators, who brought great suffering to the capital and the country at large. Under Idi Amin’s reign of terror (1971–79), more than three hundred thousand Ugandans were killed. Another one hundred thousand lost their lives under the rule of strongman Milton Obote (1980–85).

The 1979 overthrow of Amin and the civil war that followed also led to the destruction of much of Kampala. The work of repairing and replacing infrastructure damaged during these ruinous years remains an ongoing project in Kampala. The rebuilding effort has been accompanied, since 1986, by the government’s attempts to carry out a progressive agenda of democratic, social, and economic reforms. Because of this agenda, Kampala was able to weather the world financial crisis of 2007–10.

Bibliography

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Immell, Myra, and Frank Robert Chalk. Uganda. Greenhaven, 2013.

Kibuuka, Robert. Understand Uganda: Fifty Years of Independence, 9th October 1962–9th October 2012. Monitor, 2012.

Kron, Josh. “A Middle Class That Is 300 Million Strong.” The New York Times, 15 Nov. 2012, p. 1.

Mwakikagile, Godfrey. Uganda: A Nation in Transition: Postcolonial Analysis. New Africa Press, 2012.

Ngwomoya, Amos. "Uganda: What Drives Kampala’s Economy?“ Daily Monitor, 3 Jan. 2021. AllAfrica, allafrica.com/stories/201801240083.html. Accessed 28 Feb. 2024.

“Uganda.” The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 20 Feb. 2024, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/uganda/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2024.

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