Why Consultrans are the right partners to revive Uganda Railways

What the report says

The Independent Uganda published a commentary arguing that Spanish engineering and consultancy firm Consultrans is a suitable partner for efforts to rehabilitate Uganda Railways Corporation’s metre-gauge network. The piece says Consultrans first worked on the sector in 2019 through the Kampala–Malaba feasibility study, which fed into a wider East African railway rehabilitation initiative supported in part by the African Development Bank and African Development Fund.

According to the article, URC formally awarded Consultrans a contract in June 2020, and the company’s work began in February 2022 after preparatory steps. The mandate included detailed engineering for the Kampala–Namanve and Tororo–Malaba sections, preliminary design of a multimodal hub in Kampala, a capacity-building project for URC staff, and a feasibility study for a signalling and traffic-control system. The commentary says the goal was to help restore a network that had fallen into disrepair and to strengthen URC’s own ability to manage future operations.

The article presents Consultrans as part of a larger Spanish group with experience in railway design, construction support and institutional capacity building. It cites previous work on rail projects in other regions, including high-speed and freight corridors. In Uganda, the writer says the company worked alongside URC with a resident technical team in Kampala. The broader context is Uganda’s long-running effort to revive rail transport after years of neglect and the collapse of the former private concession, which left much of the network unusable.