Why would a country that is struggling with return on infrastructure investment and a heavy current account deficit launch $1 billion road expressway (circa 3% of GDP), which project is publicised as a concession and yet demand risk is retained by the public? Bankability is on the back of the poor. We must ask, why are we in this situation?
Dear Dr Fred Amonya, I quite understand your feeling for this country, but the project could be a special intervention or a project to attract foreign gains. Politicians in most cases do things for a gain either personal or for the country. The elites only need to monitor the progress of the project.
It is not easy to give binary and scientific-empirical replies to the problem posted in the question. But your statements provide a few basic information which are of concern. First, 3% of GDP for a highway of about 84 km (as shown by Google) is too high ($1 Billion) for such a small stretch of road. It is also stated that your country has heavy current account deficit. Under such limited information, three things can be stated, given the fact that I have one of the largest number of refereed scientific publications (international and national) on infrastructure in India. First, most politicians in these semi-feudal pseudo-democratic (assuming that there is some form of democracy in Uganda) prefer large projects with high material expenditure to gain massive rent from such project as they basically corrupt in underdeveloped societies because of lack of rule of law. Second, even if this is true, investment (which will become capital tomorrow) in National Highways is the best infrastructure for such underdeveloped countries, though the amount appears too high even in India's standard. India's NH system are now governed by an altogether different body largely beyond the control of petty and cheap politicians. I move thousands of km by car through this NH without much trouble. Thanks to our earlier PM, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpai who has died a few weeks ago. Finally, under any situation, preferring crucial NH for large scale investment is eventually beneficial to the poor also as it automatically generates numerous derivatives of development which have significant positive effects on manual as well as skilled employment generation. Still I beg to admit that I have very limited idea of governance system in Uganda. You can see my papers in ResearchGate.
Thanks for your interest and effort. Bring physics to history. We start staring at dynamical and non-ergodic systems of Africa. Draw in the realities of inequality. We see the need for surgical investment and the imprudence of projects like this Kampala-Jinja Expressway. Cf. Preprint Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in Africa: Harking the Holonomic
For closer context, here is Kampala - Entebbe Expressway that was opened this year and not yet tolled. https://t.co/BI8zK4VjjW
The Ugandan experience brings out the problem of epistemology of development. Whether or not development is facilitated by huge investments in current and capital projects is dependent on the state of economies in particular, on the relationships between and among the sectors. Development economists and political scientists need to investigate the implications of the investments on present and future governance programmes and how the latter in turn impact on political stability as a measure of the extent to which citizens participate in affairs that affect their social existence.
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