The Minister of Works and Transport is up in arms against road contractors and rightly so. Every reasonable Ugandan appreciates that Kampala's roads need repair. For years, motorists have complained about potholes, broken drainage, flooding, dust and deteriorating infrastructure. No one disputes the need for rehabilitation. Better roads improve safety, attract investment and enhance the quality of life.
The real problem is not that roadworks are happening. It is how they are being executed.
Today, large sections of Kampala have become a maze of excavations, diversions and endless traffic jams. Commuters leave home before sunrise only to spend hours trapped in congestion. Businesses lose customers because access roads are blocked. Delivery trucks arrive late, Ambulances get stuck, taxi operators burn more fuel and workers report to their offices late and exhausted.
Ironically, the very infrastructure meant to improve productivity is, in the short term, eroding it.
The economic cost of these disruptions is enormous. Every hour spent in unnecessary traffic translates into lost productivity, increased fuel consumption and higher transport costs, which are ultimately passed on to consumers. Small businesses located along construction corridors suffer declining sales as customers simply avoid affected areas.
This is not an argument against road construction. Rather, it is a call for smarter construction management.
Across many major cities around the world, disruptive road maintenance is often scheduled during the night when traffic volumes are lowest. While not every activity can safely be undertaken after dark, many operations—such as milling worn asphalt, resurfacing, line marking, and certain drainage works—can be completed overnight with proper lighting, safety measures and supervision.
Kampala should adopt the same principle wherever practical.
Night-time construction would dramatically reduce daytime congestion, minimize
disruption to businesses and public transport, and allow contractors to work on critical road sections without paralysing the city. Motorists would wake up to completed work rather than spending the day navigating bottlenecks.
Some may argue that working at night is more expensive because of lighting, overtime pay and additional safety requirements. That is true. But we must also ask a more important question: what is the cost of doing it during the day?
If thousands of workers collectively lose tens of thousands of productive hours each day because of avoidable congestion, the economy pays a far higher price than any additional cost associated with night shifts.
Moreover, roadworks should be better coordinated. Too often, several major roads in the same corridor are dug up simultaneously, leaving motorists with few viable alternatives. Construction should be phased so that one critical route is completed before another is closed. Utility companies should synchronise their activities so that freshly paved roads are not reopened weeks later for water, sewer or telecommunications works. These concerns have long been raised by businesses and infrastructure stakeholders themselves.
Communication with the public also requires improvement. Motorists deserve timely information about road closures, expected completion dates and available alternative routes. Digital platforms, radio stations and roadside electronic signs can help people plan journeys more efficiently instead of discovering closures after joining traffic.
Contractors must equally be held accountable for delays. Roads should not remain half-completed for months because of poor supervision, inadequate planning or avoidable bureaucracy. Every unnecessary week of delay imposes costs on ordinary Ugandans. Recent reporting has highlighted concerns about projects dragging on while roads continue to deteriorate.
Kampala is growing rapidly, and infrastructure development cannot be postponed. However, development should not come at the expense of economic efficiency. Good infrastructure planning is measured not only by the quality of the finished road but also by how intelligently the construction process is managed.
The choice should not be between fixing roads and keeping the city moving. With proper planning, Uganda can achieve both.
Road rehabilitation is a sign of progress. But progress should not require bringing Kampala to a standstill. It is time for city authorities and contractors to embrace a simple but transformative idea: where feasible, let the busiest roads be repaired while the city sleeps, so that Kampala can work when it wakes.
Dennis Katungi is the Deputy Executive Director at Uganda Media Centre
@Dennis_Katungi