Overview:
Planners warn that building on Constitutional Square would strip Kampala's business district of its main emergency assembly point and its green cover.
Kampala’s Lord Mayor has asked Uganda’s attorney general to block a plan to build a hotel and shopping complex on the capital’s main public square.
Ronald Nsubuga Balimwezo wants the government’s chief legal adviser to tell the cabinet to reject the proposal for Constitutional Square, a two-acre open space in the centre of Kampala.
In a letter dated 12 September, he said the land was held in trust for the public and that Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) had a legal duty to protect it.
“We will not sit around while public land is appropriated by a private developer,” he wrote.
The square, known locally as City Square, was set aside by the British colonial administration in 1903. It was renamed in 1995 to mark the promulgation of Uganda’s constitution.
‘Just a proposal’
According to Mr Balimwezo’s letter, President Yoweri Museveni received a proposal from the businessman Hassan Bulwadda to build a solar-powered complex on the site, including a hotel and a shopping mall.
The president then asked the minister for Kampala, Minsa Kabanda, to look at the idea.
Ms Kabanda confirmed she had received the president’s letter but said nothing had been decided. She said the president had asked her to consult stakeholders and had not issued an instruction.
It is not the first attempt to build on the square. In 2001 the city council agreed to lease it to the businessman Hassan Basajjabalaba, but the move was blocked by the local government minister at the time, Bidandi Ssali.
Mr Balimwezo said approving a development now would reverse 24 years of government policy. He also cited a 2007 order which he said designated the square as a protected historical site.
Emergency assembly point
The Lord Mayor said the square was the main place people in the surrounding office blocks, markets and courts would gather in an emergency such as a fire or an earthquake.
Building on it would leave the city centre without that space, he said. He added that the park absorbed rainwater and provided green cover.
David Katamba, a professor of sustainability management at Makerere University Business School, said cities such as Amsterdam, Lisbon and Milan had kept open spaces of the kind Kampala’s early planners had allowed for.
He said the city’s remaining green areas were already being lost to wetland encroachment, deforestation and building, and pointed to the nearby Namanve forest, which has been turned into an industrial park.
Amanda Ngabirano, who chairs Uganda’s National Physical Planning Board, said on X that she could not imagine the square being lost.
Mr Balimwezo has also asked the attorney general to have security personnel removed from the grounds and to have investors directed to other land through the Uganda Investment Authority.