Uganda kampala
Kampala is the capital and largest city of Uganda. The city is divided into five boroughs that oversee local planning: Kampala Central Division, Kawempe Division, Makindye Division, Nakawa Division, and Lubaga Division. The city is coterminous with Kampala District. Surrounding Kampala is the rapidly growing Wakiso District, whose population more than doubled between 2002 and 2014 and now stands at over 2 million.
Uganda Kampala History
The city grew as the capital of the Buganda kingdom, from which several buildings survive, including the Kasubi Tombs (built in 1881), the Lubiri Palace, the Buganda Parliament and the Buganda Court of Justice. Severely damaged in the Uganda-Tanzania War, the city has since then been rebuilt with constructions of new construction of hotels, banks, shopping malls, educational institutions, and hospitals and the improvement of war torn buildings and infrastructure. Traditionally, Kampala was a city of seven hills, but over time it has come to have a lot more.
Features
The main campus of Makerere University is in the Makerere Hill area of the city.
Kampala also hosts the headquarters of the East African Development Bank on Nakasero Hill and the Uganda Local Governments Association on Entebbe Road.
Kampala was originally built on seven hills, but as its size has increased, it has expanded to more hills than seven. The original seven hills are:
- The first hill in historical importance is Kasubi Hill, which is where the Kasubi Tombs of the previous Kabaka of Buganda are located.
- The second is Mengo Hill where the present Lubiri (Kabaka’s Palace) is and the headquarters of the Buganda Court of Justice and of the Lukiiko, Bugand’s Parliament (Bulange).
- The third is Kibuli Hill, which is home to the Kibuli Mosque.
- The fourth is Namirembe Hill, home to the Namirembe Anglican Cathedral.
- The fifth is Lubaga Hill, where the Rubaga Catholic Cathedral is.
- The sixth is Nsambya Hill, was the headquarters of the Mill Hill Mission. It now houses Nsambya Hospital.
- The seventh is Kampala Hill (Old Kampala), where Frederick Lugard, a British mercenary in the pay of the Imperial British East Africa Company, who arrived in Uganda in the 1890s, built his fort on top of the hill. The original fort was relocated to a different site on the hill in 2003 to accommodate the largest mosque in Uganda. It has a seating capacity of 15,000 people, built with monetary assistance from Libya. The completed mosque was opened officially in June 2007. The relocation of the fort has since been a source of controversy between the Historic Buildings Conservation Trust (HBCT) of Uganda and the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council (UMSC). The UMSC was given the gazetted land as a gift by President Idi Amin in 1972 during its inauguration.
A view of suburban Kampala
The city has spread to Nakasero Hill, where there are some hotels, including the Grand Imperial Hotel, the Kampala Hilton Hotel, the Kampala Intercontinental Hotel, the Imperial Royale Hotel, the Kampala Serena Hotel, the Kampala Sheraton Hotel, and the Kampala Speke Hotel.
There are also Tank Hill and Mulago Hill. The city is expanding rapidly to include Makindye Hill and Konge Hill.Kololo Hill, to the east of Nakasero, is the highest hill in the city at 1,300 metres (4,300 ft) above sea level.
Other features of the city include the Uganda Museum, the Ugandan National Theatre, Nakasero Market, and St. Balikuddembe Market (formerly Owino Market). Kampala is also known for its nightlife, which includes several casinos, notably Casino Simba in the Garden City shopping centre, Kampala Casino, and Mayfair Casino. Port Bell on the shores of Lake Victoria is 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away.
Kampala hosts a Bahá’í House of Worship known as the Mother Temple of Africa and is situated on Kikaya Hill on the outskirts of the city. The temple was inaugurated in January 1961.
The Ahmadiyya Central Mosque in Kampala is the central mosque of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which has six minarets and can hold up to 9,000 worshippers.
Uganda Kampala Transport
Kampala is served by Entebbe International Airport, which is the largest airport in Uganda.
Boda-bodas (local motorbike transport) are a popular mode of transport that gives access to many areas within and outside the city. Standard fees for these range from USh:1,000 to 2,000 or more. Boda-bodas are useful for passing through rush-hour traffic, although many are poorly maintained and dangerous.
In early 2007, it was announced that Kampala would remove commuter taxis from its streets and replace them with a comprehensive city bus service. (In Kampala, the term “taxi” refers to a 15-seater minibus used as public transport.) The bus service was expected to cover the greater Kampala metropolitan area including Mukono, Mpigi, Bombo, Entebbe, Wakiso and Gayaza. As of December 2011 the service had not yet started. Having successfully completed the Northern Bypass, the government, in collaboration with its stakeholders, now plans to introduce the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Kampala by 2014. On 12 March 2012, Pioneer Easy Bus Company, a private transport company, started public bus service in Kampala with an estimated 100 buses each with a 60-passenger capacity (30 seated and 30 standing), acquired from China. Another 422 buses were expected in the country in 2012 to complement the current fleet. The buses operate 24 hours daily. The company has a concession to provide public transport in the city for the next five years.The buses were impounded for back taxes in December 2013. The company expected to resume operation in February 2015.
In 2014, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and a China transportation company signed a Memorandum of Understanding, that they would at some point begin embarking on building a light rail system in Kampala, similar to the one recently completed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
On 11 April 2011, the pressure group Activists for Change (A4C) held its first Walk to Work protest near Kampala, in response to a comment by President Museveni on the increased cost of fuel, which had risen by 50 percent between January and April 2011. He said: “What I call on the public to do is to use fuel sparingly. Don’t drive to bars.” The protest, which called on workers to walk to work to highlight the increased cost of transport in Uganda, was disrupted by police, who fired tear gas and arrested three-time presidential candidate Kizza Besigye and Democratic Party leader Norbert Mao. In the course of the protest, Besigye was shot in the right arm by a rubber bullet. The government blamed the violence on protesters
Uganda Kampala Climate
Kampala has a tropical rainforest climate (Af) under the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system.
Another facet of Kampala’s weather is that it features two annual wet seasons. There is a long rainy season from August to December and a short rainy season from February to June. However, the shorter rainy season sees substantially heavier rainfall per month, with April typically seeing the heaviest amount of precipitation at an average of around 169 millimetres (6.7 in) of rain.
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