Let me cut to the bone, no decorations. Kampala does not need more roads; it needs rearrangement. Today? You find yourself sitting in a traffic jam for hours, just to move three kilometres. Annoyingly, the traffic jams are not caused by an excess of cars or a lack of roads; rather, 70 per cent of our roads are deteriorating. One important mindset change we need to realise is that we don’t need more asphalt; we need more intelligence. You only need to look at the countries that actually have traffic to understand the situation. Germany, for example, has the highest vehicle density in Europe with over 600 cars per 1000 people. But they do not expand blindly. Now look at Kampala; we are doing the opposite. We are a young city, acting like we are out of land. So, our problem is not traffic but the city design. For instance, when one walks from Wandegeya to Clock Tower, they will encounter open side drains and sideyard drains that swallow half the road. Every day, they swallow tonnes of rubbish, kaveera, sand, plastic and even dead rats. That rubbish blocks rainwater, which in turn leads to the destruction of tarmac. When the tarmac is destroyed, it creates potholes, resulting in traffic jams. OUR SEWERAGE IS 50-60 YEARS OLD Let us be honest about history. The city sewerage and drainage master plan was drawn in the sixties when Kampala was a town of 200,000 people. On a personal note, I was the main executor when we were constructing several roads in Lusaka and Luanda. Do you know what those two cities do not have? Open stormwater drains in the central business district. I have also worked on roads in Windhoek and you will not find an open stormwater drain there. This is so because open drains are a danger to pedestrians, to boda boda riders and vehicles that veer off. The world buried its stormwater 50 years ago. We are still exposing ours and calling it infrastructure. Meanwhile, I am perturbed as to why we are planting palm trees in the city centre yet they give us nothing. Yes, they are beautiful but useless in an economy. We can do better by making Kampala a fruit city. Mango lines on Jinja road; orange trees on Ggaba road, or even jackfruit, avocado and guava along the Northern bypass. Children walking to school may pick a fruit. During my young days growing up in Jinja in the 1970s, we could pick jambula, badam and red coconut by the roadsides. In all, palm trees don’t feed anyone but fruit trees feed people. THE PRESCRIPTION: CHEAP, FAST, DIGNIFIED In the small town of Kifuuta where I hail from, the oracles there would say: “Tegeka, zimba ate gazziwa.” Loosely translated, it means plan first, build right and then expand. So, we ought to cover the drains and reclaim at least four meters on every major road without buying one inch of land. Let us stop digging new roads. Start engineering the ones we have. What’s more, bury the stormwater. Open drains have no place in a capital city. Honestly, we don’t need foreign consultants to tell us this. We have qualified Ugandan engineers to implement it. THE FINAL WORD It is a global open secret that Kampala is one of the most beautiful cities. But beauty without planning is just a photo for tourists. The day we remember to build a city for the people who live in it is the day Kampala will stop choking and start flowing. Dear key stakeholders in the city’s management, dress Kampala like a city that has something to lose; not like a city we are just passing through. The plan is cheap. The dignity of our capital is expensive. As for now, let me head back to Kifuuta, Katooke Kyotera Buddu to pick my coffee. The author is an investor, contractor, and football enthusiast.The post The day we stop building Kampala backwards appeared first on The Observer Media Ltd.