The Busega-Mpigi Expressway: How a failure of authority became a failure of engineering

What the report says

Watchdog Uganda reports that the troubled Busega-Mpigi Expressway in central Uganda, a 23.7-kilometre project running from Busega on Kampala’s western edge toward Mpigi, has become the focus of sanctions against five public officials. According to the article, these include a permanent secretary who was told to step aside, an engineer-in-chief retired in the public interest, a head of design indicted, and two design engineers interdicted.

The publisher argues that the main decisions that drove the project’s problems were made not in the design office, but by officials with authority over contracts, route approval and release of the contractor. It says the civil-works contract was signed in June 2019 while design work was still being revised, and that a key change in alignment was approved in 2017 by a senior planning and engineering official. The article also says the contractor was released onto the new alignment in December 2019, before final approval, and that a later variation order involved a cost increase.

Watchdog Uganda further says technical reviews by Uganda National Roads Authority engineers identified major overstatements in the revised bill of quantities and pushed for savings of about 200 billion shillings, suggesting the engineering review process did detect problems. The piece frames the case as an example of authority and accountability being misaligned, with engineers appearing to bear most of the public blame even though commercial and authorising decisions were central to the project’s escalation.

The article also notes that UNRA later was folded into the Ministry of Works and Transport, adding institutional context to the dispute.