Chinese footprints (2)

Flavia was about to say something when a man on the back of a passing lorry carrying bananas shouted, “Flavia, how are you?” She did not respond but laughed as she looked down boyishly.

Flavia knows that her district received road construction machines from China meant to grade roads in her area. She is optimistic that problems of poor road networks will soon be history.

So soon actually, as Uganda’s state minister for works engineer John Byabagambi notes

Sheema district received three trucks, one grader, four double-cabin cars, three tractors and one motorcycle as part of the road construction unit distributed by the government of Uganda to all districts and municipalities.

They are part of the road construction units purchased using a loan of 106 million US dollars, according to minister Byabagambi.

The funds are in addition to a loan of 350 million US dollars which the government of Uganda got from Exim bank of China for construction of Entebbe-Kampala highway at 2% annual interest

“The money from China is easy to obtain. It has no a lot of conditionality,” Byabagambi notes further stressing that the money which the government of Uganda received from China during the last financial year is far more than it received from the World Bank and European Union combined.

Various roads in Uganda are also being constructed by the Chinese constructors. The more competing constructors there are, the lower the unit cost of construction.

“The unit cost which was about 800,000 dollars per kilometer, we have seen it going down to about 700,000,” minister Byabagambi narrates.

Byabagambi reveals that the newly distributed machines are meant for light grading of roads only.

This answers Flavia’s concern and the worries of several other Ugandans that have been criticizing these machines saying they are weak.

“We want these machines to open up new roads and have the old ones tarmacked,” Flavia told me her feelings as she tried to dodge a giant pothole in the middle of the road.

Godfrey Kuruhiira Akiiki is Flavia’s district Chief Administrative Officer. I told him the expectations of Flavia. He says she is over expectant like several other people in the district.

Kuruhiira notes that the local people expect the machines to solve all their road problems but they can’t because they are not meant to do all sorts of work.

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