Planning of National Transport Infrastructure
In the Islamic Countries
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Capacity considerations in the institutions are very important. The MoWT and its subsidiaries
have some highly knowledgeable and skilled personnel, but generally they lack `hands on’
experience to make a national transport plan, and most of the work is outsourced to consultants.
The EU and others consider that Technical Assistance is needed in the leading Uganda agencies
such as the UNRA and MoWT (European Commission, 2016) as shown in the text box. One of the
shortcomings is the lack of any integrated planning agency and given the tenets of the NTMP to
integrate land use with transport planning and to make sure that the subsectors are integrated
has not registered any progress, consequently each transport mode does its own thing and
coordination with other ministries is insufficient.
EU Technical Assistance
The technical assistance (TA) is expected to improve the human resource and institutional
capacity of government institutions in the transport sector, namely the Ministry of Works and
Transport (MoWT), the Uganda National Roads Authority and the Uganda Road Fund.
Specifically, the TA will (a) strengthen the capacity of the MoWT in gender-responsive strategic
planning and oversight in a multimodal transport environment, contributing to an appropriate
investment-maintenance mix, climate change mitigation and building climate resilience of the
sector; (b) improve the delivery of road development projects; and (c) improve the operational
efficiency of road maintenance.
3.3.3. Technical Factors
When formulating the NTMP there appears to be no consideration given to the alternatives
between transport modes not to the prioritization among certain transport modes, transport
corridors, and major transport projects. Simply put each subsector is considered on its own
merits completely separately from each other. Having said that there are numerous projects that
aim to provide interchange between different modes of transport. The technical description
considers the quantum of transport demand and the response in terms of network provision
and influence of planning on investment decisions made. Uganda has a transport system that
was based initially on railway and waterway services, followed later by roads and air services.
Today, Uganda’s transport system relies on almost totally on roads that account for 96.5% of
freight cargo and 95% of passenger traffic.
The road network in Uganda is classified into National Roads, District Roads, Urban Roads, and
Community access Roads. According to UNRA, the total national road network is made up of
21,000 km of national roads; 32,000 km of district roads; 13,000 km of urban roads; and 85,000
km of community access roads. According to the 12th Joint Transport Sector Review, as of June
2016, the total paved network accounts for 4,157 km of roads, and the unpaved network 16,388
km. This means that a large proportion (more than 80%) of the national road network remains
unpaved.
Paved road density is a critical indicator in determining the sufficiency of the road network so
important for planning. The status in Uganda showed there is 1 kmof paved road for each 10,000
population, alternatively there is 17km per 1,000 km2 indicates, both indicate very low
accessibility.