Planning of National Transport Infrastructure
In the Islamic Countries
77
that have related in various ways to the preparation of the NTMP and also the Northern
Transport Corridor. Clearly transport planning has moved on from simply being an engineering
tool to plot a road network on a map as was the case in the 1970s in developed countries and in
the 1990s in less developed countries. Whilst it is relatively easy to prepare the enabling policies
and legislation that set up the multi-sectoral planning framework, the challenge is the
coordination and implementation required by the leading Ministry – in this case the MoWT in
Uganda. The level of implementation of the Master Plan has been limited mostly because of a
weak institutional response to it.
The Master Planning was followed by Strategic Implementation Plan (MoWT, 2015) and sub-
sectoral programming that were produced by the pertinent agencies. Implementation is by no
means complete and the process of a formal mid-term review commenced in 2018. A new
transport policy is being formulated and a new transport plan is envisaged covering 2020 to
2040 (World Bank, 2017). This short history reflects a good approach to transport planning that
can be summarised as follows:
 Recognizing the need for being policy driven
 Producing a Master Plan
 Providing enabling legislation
 Implementation planning
 Sub-sectoral programming
 Monitoring and evaluation
In addition to the planning instrument, contemporary legislation was adopted that established
an autonomous Uganda Roads Fund (URF) and Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) and
enabling legislation for railway and airports privatisation. Sector management is undergoing
reform as discussed in the next section. Some sectors have reformed well, such as roads, rail
badly and aviation not at all. But that is the nature of reform.