You joined UNRA in 2015 after a successful career at the Uganda Tax Revenue Authority (UTRA) and have been widely credited for fixing that body. How has your past experience helped you in your role as Executive Director of UNRA?

As commissioner general, I had the opportunity to restructure the organisation, which allowed me to create new teams and resolve issues of incompetency and corruption that had plagued the organisation. I had a lot of support from the government, the board of UTRA, and the Ugandan public to make major changes to the organisation. In the decade or so that I was commissioner general, we made a lot of progress, but it was a team effort, supported and financed by the government. Overseeing transformational reforms at UTRA gave me an edge in dealing with similar issues here at UNRA. Corruption, poor services, and a lack of engagement with communities affected our roadworks. In 2015, we had almost the same level of public disgust with UNRA as we once had with UTRA. Coming from the outside poses its own challenges – you do not know the institution as well as those who have been here for many years. Again, we’ve had a lot of support from our board and from government. We went through a restructure, made a commitment to transformational change, and were given the financial resources to achieve that promise.

The road sector is significantly different than the tax sector. The public must see the completed road to believe you are accomplishing anything. However, the construction industry is a multi-year industry, unlike tax, where you collect yearly revenue and demonstrate results annually. Even if it takes time, we are laying down the foundations for long-term change. Still, there has been visible and serious changes in the roads over the last few years. We are putting more paved kilometres down every year, we are seeing faster turnaround of payments, and we have shaved procurement timelines down from two years to 6-8 months by streamlining administrative reviews.

What would you say to investors in Uganda for whom this idea of corruption is a concern? Is it being addressed?

Corruption is being addressed. Our press is very free, which means that whenever we do something wrong, the media reports it extensively. It is not easy to hide things for long. Additionally, our institutions and our president have been very vocal about tackling corruption. We are improving our systems to make them more transparent and implementing processes for greater accountability. Corruption thrives where information is hidden, and we have made a commitment to the public to end those practices. It is a continuous fight, but we are seeing results.

The UNRA has been in existence for around nine years. How would you describe the evolution of the country’s roads since then and this institution’s role in making change happen?

We have a huge road network in this country. Uganda is not a very large country in the African context, yet we have 145,000km of roads in different shapes and conditions. Of that, 20,500km are part of the national network that criss-crosses the country from border to border. We have roads to primary areas of production and roads that link urban centres. The rest of the roads are managed municipally. Of that entire network, the paved network is only about 5,200km. Of those 5,200km of paved roads, 4,000km is the UNRA network. This means a lot of the roads are in rough condition. In the mid-1980’s, we had less than 1,000km paved in the whole country. There has been progress, but there is still a lot to be done. As part of the National Plan, our aim is to pave 300km of tarmac every year. We want to set our targets higher than that, and the only way we can do that is if we have the resources. UNRA can work on some of the smaller sections of the road, but the private sector provides critical partnerships for the larger roadworks.  

You have an enormous task at hand to prepare Uganda’s roads for the upcoming oil and gas operations. Approximately 600km of roads are required to be laid out over the next two years. What is your strategy to meet the demands?

In December 2016 we learned that we had to lay 600km of roads before the oil starts flowing in 2020, which gave us a two year timeline for procurement and construction. To meet this very tight deadline, we set up a special taskforce comprised of specialists devoted to these 600km that would fast-track every single process from data collection, design, feasibility studies, land acquisition, and environmental studies. The taskforce has been doing this since January 2017, and we are already on the tail end of the procurement process and have signed a number of contracts. The contractors will begin work in March, which leaves us just 2018 and 2019 to complete the actual construction, as the roads need to be functional and the heavy equipment in place by 2020. To make sure that the equipment can be transported in time, we are looking at potential bottlenecks for moving high volume high tonnage cargo, such as bridges. We also have areas of environmental concern, such as water streams and animal crossings where we did thorough environmental studies to ensure ecosystems were not destabilised. All areas have now been approved by the environmental authority. We are beginning construction on these various bottleneck areas. This will mean that even if the roads are not fully paved, the challenging parts of the pathways have been completed and the equipment can still move. The timeline is tight by any standard, but we are confident that we will meet our deadlines.

How involved are local contractors, local specialists and local consultants in the development of Uganda’s roads?

As part of our government policy, when we put out tenders for any project, local contractors are required to participate in at least 30 per cent. It encourages foreign contractors or investors to look for local partners.

Do you have examples about how UK companies have been involved in Uganda’s roads?

The UK is supporting two challenging projects developing oil roads through one of the game parks, and we are receiving financing from UK Export Finance. We have had several engagements with them, and British companies are participating in these projects. We have thousands of kilometres of roads to pave, and we hope to attract British companies to come work in Uganda on these projects. The opportunities are there, and we’re looking for good contractors that can help us build good roads. We’ve interacted with several British companies who have come for exploratory visits. I should also add that when reviewing tenders, we review the technical and financial bids holistically, so we are not limited to selecting whichever firm can create the lowest bid.

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Is there anything else you would like to add?

Uganda’s economy has been fairly stable for a long period. We live in a country that has enjoyed peace for 30 years now, so the systems are in place to serve investors. We can improve, of course, but which country can’t? We are keen to forge new partnerships with British companies that can come work in the infrastructure sector, which is the foundation of the growth of our economy. We also want our local companies to grow and believe that British companies can be extraordinary partners in terms of supervision and project design to help us facilitate that capacity building.