NEW ENTEBBE HIGHWAY – NEW NILE BRIDGE – MBARARA BYPASS AND NEW CITY FLYOVER MARK UGANDA’S INFRASTRUCTURE ADVANCE IN 2018
(Posted 20th December 2018)
After completing and commissioning the new highway from Kampala to the international airport in Entebbe – apart from a section through Abaita Ababiri and a second section into Entebbe municipality – has traffic to and from the airport significantly improved.
An additional section off the main highway at Kajjansi – also home to Kampala’s light aircraft aerodrome – now leads to the Lake Victoria Serena Golf Resort & Spa and on to the conference venue in Munyonyo, again cutting transit time from and to the airport to these two locations to just over 30 minutes and 40 minutes respectively.
This has boosted in particular Uganda’s golfing product, now that the full 18 holes at the Lake Victoria Serena are open for play.
Getting from central Uganda to the East of the country has also been given a boost when the new Nile Bridge was opened a few months ago, finally allowing for the aged Owen Falls dam to undergo major repairs and refurbishment, leaving that river crossing as a fall back position.
Kampala and Jinja, and at a later stage on to the border with Kenya, will also be linked with a new four lane highway which will link to the new bridge, leaving local traffic to use the old route when complete.
In western Uganda was at long last the bypass around the town of Mbarara opened, Uganda’s second largest town. Traffic from Kampala to Ntungamo, Kabale and the Rwandan border but also to Kasese and the border with Congo, had to crawl through the Mbarara centre in the past but can now give those traffic jams a wide berth, making travel across Uganda faster and safer.
This week was the Kampala Flyover Project launched, like the bridge in Jinja also largely financed by the government of Japan, which should bring great relief to Kampala road users, linking Jinja Road with Queens Way, a measure to be further enhanced when the long in coming Southern Bypass around Kampala will complete the traffic ring around the capital, making through the city traffic from all directions unnecessary.
While Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa – and other key highway projects around the capital – have set the pace in recent years for road and bridge infrastructure developments in East Africa, has Uganda this year finally started to catch up, to the relief of locals as well as for the benefit of an increasing number of visitors who can now enjoy faster transit times – from the city to the airport but also between key national parks – and smoother driving on many more resurfaced roads.
For additional information about Uganda click on www.visituganda.com or check out www.ugandawildlife.org
