Masaka tests decentralisation on roads, wards and water, not new offices

MASAKA — Local government in Masaka is being judged less by new offices than by whether a road, a maternity ward, a classroom, a water point or a training place actually reaches the people who need it.

At Kyanamukaka, the town council now has administrative premises on six acres given by former Vice-President Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi. Mayor Zaina Nakidde says the change residents can point to is health, education, water, roads and youth work, not only a building. The council has secured a maternity ward, with delivery equipment from Rotary Club. “Our children are immunised in villages and monitored in schools,” she said.

Six classrooms at COP Primary School in Zzimwe Ward have been tabled for construction. Water has been extended to Buyinja and Zzimwe wards, cutting the walk for clean water and the risk of water-borne disease. Roads on the Bukunda and Kamuzinda routes towards the town council are being improved. Fifteen young people spent six months at the Presidential Industrial Hub in Ndegeya. The council has also backed coffee and passion-fruit projects aimed at youth employment and women.

Uganda’s decentralisation policy sits in the 1995 Constitution and the Local Governments Act, Cap. 138. The Ministry of Local Government says it is meant to move political, administrative and financial authority closer to citizens so that services and local economic development follow. The ministry lists 135 districts, 10 cities, 31 municipalities, 589 town councils, 1,487 sub-counties and 10,716 parishes. That is the machinery through which government is supposed to reach the last household. Masaka is one place where the claim can be checked against what is on the ground.

District Chairman John Kakande, who is studying public administration and economics at Kampala University, says the subject matters because development depends on how local governments raise and spend money. He said local revenue fell from about Shs300 million to Shs250 million in the last financial year. Before the area became a separate district under the former municipal arrangement, he said, collections stood at about Shs2 billion. The drop shows the bind many councils face: demands for services rise while locally raised money shrinks.

He said the district’s performance ranking improved from 166th to 19th, and that the gain brought Shs1 billion for roads. For a farming district, a road is not only tarmac or murram. It is how produce reaches a market, how a patient reaches a health centre, and how a child reaches school. Kakande credited area MP Richard Sebamala with support for Kanamusabala, Bukunda, Ttala, Luvunja, Kiteredde and Kaluuma roads, Haruna Kasolo with other road projects, and Ssekandi with 10 acres for the district headquarters, where construction is under way.

He also said the district lost about Shs3 billion through the alleged swindling and sale of Kitabiro land, and that he has commissioned nine projects, which he links to transparency. “We are considering to construct headquarters under Uganda Police Defence Engineering Construction, and we projected Shs700 million for the construction,” he said. He credited Chief Administrative Officer John Assimwe with a result-oriented administration. The ministry’s district administration department is supposed to back councils through supervision, staffing and performance improvement. Money lost to land deals tests whether accountability has moved as close to the people as the new offices have.

At Kyanamukaka Health Centre III, Kakande said staffing has increased, but essential drugs are still short. A ward without medicine is only a building. He also cited forest loss in Bukakata, Kyesiiga and Kyanamukaka, and land grabbing that has pushed some residents from their homes. For households that live off farming, fishing and natural resources, land and trees are income, not scenery. “We are the think tank of the communities,” he said.

At Diimo, on Lake Victoria, State House political mobiliser Oscar Mutebi has worked with fishing and farming households. The Office of the President’s 2026/27 staff list names Oscar Franciso Mutebi as a political mobiliser; earlier records listed him as a private secretary. He has given maize flour and cooking oil to vulnerable homes. “It is better to deliver services to people than to walk the grapevine of politics,” he said. In December 2025 he supervised the handover of 20,000 coffee seedlings in Kyesiiga under an initiative linked to Ssekandi. A seedling still has to survive, be maintained and find a market. He has also run the Oscar Cup in Kyanamukaka and supported St Mugaga and Molly and Paul secondary schools, including a pledge of computers for ICT.

In Entebbe, Town Clerk Emmanuel Gakyaalo Mugisha said residents bought a motor grader worth Shs1.08 billion from their taxes, and that service delivery starts with the people themselves. Mayor Fabrice Rulinda points to induction and mentorship, and to 11 roads, as the measure of his term.

For Masaka, the last mile is still the drug on the shelf, the classroom, the water point and the seedling. The offices are up. The test is whether they stay staffed, funded and accountable.

The writer, Brian Mugenyi, is a journalist and a student of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kampala University.

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