For a landlocked country, Uganda once had a railway that did not end at the shoreline.At Port Bell and Jinja, railway tracks ran to the waters, allowing railway wagons to be loaded onto ferries and transported across Lake Victoria to Mwanza in Tanzania and Kisumu in Kenya, where cargo rejoined railway networks leading to Dar es Salaam and Mombasa.Lake Victoria was, in effect, part of Uganda’s railway. Today, that marine railway system is largely a story of ships sunk, vessels grounded, infrastructure left idle and public assets whose trail has become increasingly difficult to follow.How did Uganda Railways Corporation (URC) go from operating a Lake Victoria railway-ferry system that moved hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cargo a year to having a marine fleet repeatedly grounded?MV Kabalega, one of Uganda’s three major wagon ferries, has been sitting on the lake floor since it sank on May 8, 2005. The vessel may never be retrieved, yet for years it continued to appear in URC’s books as a multi-billion-shilling asset.A Treasury Memorandum indicated that as at June 30, 2021, URC’s non-current assets included Shs 5.76 billion attributed to MV Kabalega. Auditors said the value could not be established because the ferry had been underwater and unretrieved.URC subsequently reduced the recorded value of the submerged vessels to a token Shs 1,000 in 2021/22 while awaiting offers to retrieve them. But the story extends beyond the three major wagon ferries that operated on Lake Victoria.World Bank records show that Uganda Railways also owned other marine assets, including a dry dock, a service launch, a small passenger ferry and a motorised lighter.In 1989, the World Bank reported that two motor vessels were being used to provide passenger and cargo services to offshore islands near Jinja. Those vessels have since disappeared from the available URC asset trail.The Jinja Pier, where Uganda’s marine railway system was based, remains, as does the railway line connecting it to the station. URC still lists Jinja Pier among its marine facilities.This investigation follows the waterborne component of Uganda’s railway story, from the decision after 1977 to build a new ferry system, through the years when it carried hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cargo, to the 2005 disaster and the unresolved fate of assets that survived it.The investigation builds on an earlier URN investigation, “The Missing URC Ledger: Billions Invested, Assets Unaccounted For,” which examined fragmented records of locomotives, wagons, coaches and other railway equipment acquired over decades.That investigation also identified Lake Victoria ferries and marine equipment as part of the wider public investment whose history needed to be followed.Rebuilding the lake railwayThe importance of Lake Victoria to Uganda’s railway became particularly clear after the breakup of the East African Railways and Harbours Corporation.A 1979 Commonwealth Team report on the rehabilitation of Uganda’s economy records that the country had previously used the lake as an alternative route to the ocean.“Until the breakup of EARC in 1975, Uganda did make some use of the alternative ocean outlet by ferry from Jinja to Mwanza, and then over Tanzania rail to Dar-es-Salaam,” the report says.The report records a decision by the Idi Amin administration in 1978 to increase Uganda’s rail-wagon ferry capacity on Lake Victoria.“A Belgian firm has been contracted to provide floating dry dock facilities at Port Bell, which will be used to assemble four wagon ferries each with a one-way load capacity of about 800 net tons of cargo,” the report says.A truck carrying wide load in Kampala crossing the railwayThe reconstruction records put the value of the Lake Victoria ferry contract at Shs 393 million at the time. Of this, Shs 219 million had been paid, leaving Shs 174 million outstanding.URC was not merely buying boats. It was rebuilding a transport corridor. The dry dock at Port Bell would allow the vessels to be assembled and maintained. Railway lines would bring cargo to the lake, ferries would carry it across the water, and railway networks on the opposite shores would move it towards the ports.A World Bank transport study described the original regional vision as the creation of a “seamless rail link around the lake”.Lake Victoria was therefore not supposed to interrupt Uganda’s railway. It was supposed to connect it. By the early 1980s, Uganda had three major wagon ferries operating on Lake Victoria: MV Kaawa, MV Kabalega and MV Pamba.A World Bank assessment said the three new ferries, each with a capacity of 22 bogie wagons, had been acquired for Lake Victoria services. A separate World Bank environmental assessment identifies MV Kaawa as having been built in 1983, MV Kabalega in 1984 and MV Pamba in 1985.The same assessment lists a dry dock, service launch, small passenger ferry and motorised lighter among other URC-owned marine assets. There were also passenger services for communities on islands around Jinja.The World Bank reported that two recently refurbished motor vessels were being used to transport passengers and cargo to offshore islands near Jinja.In 1989, Uganda Railways was therefore not only transporting international freight between Port Bell, Mwanza and Kisumu. It was also operating vessels serving communities around Jinja.However, the records examined so far do not identify the two vessels by name or provide later disposal, retirement or transfer records. The physical setting for this forgotten part of the railway system remains visible at Jinja Pier.A later transport assessment describes the pier as a rail-wagon terminal built in the 1960s and connected to the railway station by a metre-gauge line. It had a berth and rail linkspan for loading and unloading wagon ferries.The Daily Monitor, reporting from the pier in 2017, described its historical role more broadly, saying it was intended to support freight and passenger services between Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, with vessels carrying merchandise to Kisumu and Mwanza.By then, however, the pier had become largely quiet. The newspaper described an overgrown facility with old and rusted equipment.URC still lists Jinja Pier as part of its marine network and says its marine services operate from both Port Bell and Jinja Pier, with the piers used by vessels transporting roll-on, roll-off cargo.When the ferries workedThe Lake Victoria ferry system once operated at significant scale. A World Bank appraisal records the capacity of each Ugandan wagon ferry at 22 wagons per trip, equivalent to about 600 tonnes of payload. Annual capacity was estimated at about 300,000 tonnes in each direction.The system was also moving substantial volumes. In 1987, the World Bank recorded that URC transported 120,000 metric tonnes of exports and 164,000 tonnes of imports using the ferries, describing the operation as relatively efficient.That amounted to nearly 284,000 tonnes of imports and exports in one year. The system continued operating at scale into the 2000s. A World Bank assessment recorded 350,000 tonnes of net goods transported in 2003. By 2004, URC’s Marine Department planned to transport 365,386 tonnes.The ferries operated daily, with about 25 crew and support staff on each vessel. Then came the accident that would fundamentally alter Uganda’s marine railway system.The accidentOn May 8, 2005, MV Kabalega collided with MV Kaawa on Lake Victoria and sank.The accident effectively removed two of Uganda’s three wagon ferries from normal service. Kaawa was grounded after the collision, while Kabalega went to the bottom of the lake.Pamba was subsequently taken out of service. A World Bank retrospective later described the accident as the “sinking of nearly the whole of Uganda’s entire commercial shipping”.Kabalega remained at the bottom of the lake, while Kaawa was eventually refurbished and returned to service following an investment of about US$3.8 million under the East Africa Trade and Transport Facilitation project.An inquiry into the accident identified inadequately trained bridge crews, failure to implement recommendations from earlier accident reports, inadequate communication equipment and the absence of an effective search-and-rescue unit capable of responding to a sinking ferry.The parliamentary committee examining the accident interviewed Samuel Kyabukulu, first officer of MV Kaawa, and Stephen Kaliisa, the third officer who had been on watch.Kaliisa told the committee that he had never undergone professional marine training despite being appointed to the position.The then Minister of Works, Housing and Communications/Works and Transport, John Nasasira, visited Port Bell shortly after the sinking. He was accompanied by then URC managing director Daudi Murungi and the late Paul Etiang, who was URC board chairman.“We are not going to allow these ones to venture without insurance,” Nasasira said, referring to the surviving MV Pamba and MV Kaawa, whose operations had been suspended until their insurance was renewed.The parliamentary committee on Works and Transport began examining the accident on May 23, 2005. Its report found that Kabalega’s insurance had expired in December 2004 and had not been renewed.Nasasira subsequently appointed a commission of inquiry headed by then Supreme Court judge Bart Katureebe, before his appointment as chief justice.The Katureebe Commission attributed the accident’s immediate cause to human error, which it linked to gross negligence, unprofessionalism and inadequate training.It also identified the unseaworthiness of the vessels as an intermediate cause, citing inadequate repairs and maintenance. Institutional and managerial neglect involving URC and, to some extent, the parent ministry was identified as a long-term cause.From ferries to grounded assetsBy 2006, Uganda’s wagon-ferry operations had been conceded to Rift Valley Railways.A subsequent World Bank lake-transport assessment found that utilisation of the rail-wagon ferries had declined substantially as railway infrastructure and rolling stock deteriorated.The same study found that, apart from Tanzania’s MV Umoja, the other four wagon ferries operating on Lake Victoria were non-operational following the Kabalega sinking.The result, it said, was a “generally dilapidated rail and lake transport network”.MV Kabalega was sunk at the bottom of Lake VictoriaUganda’s marine infrastructure then entered a long period of uncertainty. In 2008, URN reported that MV Pamba and MV Kaawa had been grounded at Port Bell for two years because of the absence of insurance and standard classification certificates.Meanwhile, Kabalega remained on the lake floor. The government considered recovering the wreck, but eventually abandoned the plan.A South African salvage company offered to retrieve the vessel for US$4.5 million. The government later abandoned the project after comparing the salvage cost with the price of replacing the vessel.Kabalega nevertheless remained in URC’s financial records. A Treasury Memorandum on the Auditor General’s report for the financial year ended June 2021 found that URC’s non-current assets included Shs 5.760 billion attributed to MV Kabalega.The same records listed another submerged vessel, MV Barbus, valued at Shs 252 million.MV Barbus, also owned by URC, had submerged, and records show that it had a capacity of 150 passengers and 30 tonnes of cargo. Together, the two submerged vessels accounted for Shs 6.012 billion in URC’s reported non-current assets.The Treasury’s concern was that the vessels had been underwater for years and had not been retrieved. Because they were submerged, they could not simply be disposed of, and auditors said it could not be established whether they still retained the values recorded in URC’s books.URC explained that the values were based on an independent valuation carried out between 2017 and 2018 and that the vessels were considered to retain value because they were made of steel.The audit, however, recommended that the submerged vessels be removed from the statement of financial position unless they were retrieved or professionally revalued.URC subsequently reduced the recorded value of the submerged assets to a token Shs1,000 in its asset register during the 2021/22 financial year.That leaves an important accountability question. While the Treasury records establish MV Barbus as another submerged URC marine asset, the available records do not explain when or where it sank, the service it performed, the circumstances of its loss, whether an insurance claim was made or why it remained on URC’s books for so long.Kaawa’s long road backThe story of MV Kaawa followed a different path. The World Bank later documented its rehabilitation.“MV Kaawa, the rescuer, was commissioned in 2012 after extensive refurbishing costing $3.8 million,” the bank reported.The ship had spent about 16 years out of service before being rehabilitated and relaunched in 2022. It returned with capacity for more than 800 tonnes of cargo and up to 22 railway wagons.In 2025, URN reported that Kaawa had spent almost a year undergoing repairs before being prepared for deployment. The vessel and Pamba had previously each been making about 11 trips a month, carrying approximately 880 tonnes, before they were grounded.The deterioration of the ships was mirrored on shore. Jinja Pier, once an important link between Uganda’s railway and Lake Victoria, entered a long period of decline.A transport assessment described the port area as quiet, with low business activity. The Ugandan government has since invested in rehabilitating the Jinja Pier railway line and yard. URC says the Jinja Pier line forms part of a wider rehabilitation programme.The corporation’s current marine information still lists Jinja Pier alongside Port Bell as a marine facility.The physical infrastructure has therefore survived. The question is whether Uganda has recovered the transport system that was built around it.The collapse of a transport corridorThe decline of the Lake Victoria railway-ferry system is visible in the cargo statistics.Port Bell cargo traffic stood at about 477,000 tonnes in 2001 and increased slightly to about 478,000 tonnes in 2002. It then fell to about 402,000 tonnes in 2003 and 431,000 tonnes in 2004.By 2005, the figure had dropped to about 105,000 tonnes. In 2006, it fell further to about 8,000 tonnes. The wider transport records describe the post-accident railway and lake system as increasingly unreliable.Jinja Bukonte line in 1954A World Bank study said the loss of four of the five regional wagon ferries, combined with deterioration of the Central Corridor railway, resulted in a “generally dilapidated rail and lake transport network”.The 2006 concession of Uganda’s railway operations to Rift Valley Railways changed the institutional management of the system. The marine operation formed part of that wider railway environment, but the marine system did not recover immediately.Instead, the documentary record shows a long period of reduced ferry utilisation, grounded vessels and renewed government and donor intervention.These were not private assets. They were public railway assets. The records examined for this investigation allow much of Uganda’s major marine investment to be traced.The Commonwealth records show the decision to expand the Lake Victoria wagon-ferry system after 1977 and the investment in a floating dry dock at Port Bell.The World Bank records identify the major wagon ferries and their capacities. They document cargo volumes, record the existence of other marine assets and describe the 2005 disaster and the subsequent rehabilitation of MV Kaawa.The post How URC’s MV Kabalega turned from Shs 6bn asset to Shs 1,000 token appeared first on The Observer Media Ltd.