Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) has held a preliminary stakeholder engagement on the development of infrastructure within Kampala Industrial and Business Park popularly known as Namanve Industrial Park.
This comes after UIA launched the three-phase Infrastructure Development Project in January 2020, which will run for 42 months with the first stage set up to involve design studies, the second construction, and the third is the warranty period.
The project will focus on developing and improving critical infrastructure in the Park, providing access to all critical infrastructure for all park users, and providing affordable working spaces for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in Uganda.
UIA, which primarily focusses on coordinating, encouraging, promoting, and facilitating investment in Uganda and with one of its key focus in accelerating Uganda’s industrialization through serviced industrial parks hosted business stakeholders with interests in the authority’s flagship park, Kampala Industrial and Business Park (KIBP) to report on the progress of the project, future improvements, and expectations.
Speaking at the engagement, Owner-Engineer Dans Aturinda emphasized that the main aim of the stakeholder engagement was to harness positive influence, mitigate any negative impacts on the project stakeholders, whilst providing access to critical infrastructure for all involved.
“Given the wide range of investment projects and businesses the investors are engaged in, our goal is to provide access to critical infrastructure, which extends to the construction of an integrated road network and bridge, a water supply network, a sewerage network, waste treatment plants, power services, fiber optic services, street lighting, CCTV services, SME workspaces and other amenities (High-Pressure Water Hydrants, Gym, Police Station and other services,” Aturinda said.
UIA Acting Director-General Joseph Kigunddu revealed that the Government, through the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, secured funding from the United Kingdom through United Kingdom Export Finance (UKEF) and entered into a memorandum of understanding with United Kingdom-based contractor Lagan Group Ltd. for the development of infrastructure in the industrial park.
Lagan Dott Namanve are the developers of the infrastructure, UIA is the “Employer” and will oversee its management and supervision of the project and the Owner’s Engineer is a consortium of four firms namely Roughton International Ltd., Turner and Townsend International Ltd., Joadah Consult Ltd., and Basic Group Ltd.
Estimates suggest that 25,484 jobs have been created in KIBP and that once the industrial park is fully operational, cumulatively, over 200,000 jobs will be created.
On why the stakeholder engagement is being held, Hamza Galiwango Director of Industrial and Business Parks at UIA said; “One of our goals is to accelerate industrialization through the serviced industrial Parks and in implementing this, we are cognizant of the fact that we need to work, not only with the investors within the park, but with the community around the parks, service providers who support the projects within the park and many other stakeholders.”
“We are currently in the design studies stage in which we are evaluating the different infrastructure requirements for the park and how to implement the different requirements to meet our investors’ expectations. As we have adopted a mixed implementation model, once studies and designs are approved, we will commence construction. We expect to begin construction of the road network at the end of January 2020, he said.
“To that end, we intend to consistently engage our various stakeholders throughout the project to ensure that they are involved in the developments as they happen and that the project outputs are in line with the requirements of our stakeholders,” he added, noting that this is the first in a series of planned engagements.
During the engagement, UIA provided a progress report on the development so far and invited stakeholders to share their experiences with the Park as well as their expectations going forward.
This preliminary engagement was restricted to the investors within the Park.
However, UIA will be holding a series of engagements, some of which the general public will be invited to attend.
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