The outgoing Lord Mayor of Kampala City, Erias Lukwago, has wished good luck to the newly elected city Lord Mayor Ranald Balimwezo of the National Unity Platform (NUP) in his term of leadership, warning him of the numerous challenges that he is headed to face in office.
According to Lukwago, the Lord Mayor’s seat presents several challenges that the new leadership should focus on to successfully deliver to the people of Kampala.
While speaking at the handover ceremony on Monday, May 11th, 2026, at City Hall, Lukwago said that the new leadership should be prepared to face the same challenges he faced during his 15-year reign as lord mayor.
“The challenges include the governance of the city by presidential directives, where the KCCA continues to experience direct control and intervention by President Museveni over the capital city’s governance in almost all sectors, including public transport, markets, SACCOs, allocation of public assets, land and drainage channels, and procurement processes, among others,” Lukwago said.
He added that related to this is the uncodified policy of subjecting access to the charity fund by the institution of KCCA from foreign philanthropists to the presidential approval, which thwarted the efforts of the office of the Lord Mayor to secure charity funds from several potential donors.
According to Lukwago, the current bloated leadership creates significant operational inefficiencies and administrative bottlenecks, adding that the fundamentally flawed 2011 hybrid system adopted without adequate benchmarking has resulted in the creation of a bloated leadership structure, comprising the already mentioned huge number of leaders in the different clusters.
“Besides reflecting mandates and inherent contradictions, this extra-large structure imposes a high financial burden on the Institution of KCCA, with the wage bill for the 467 political leaders and for the 1845 technical staff (excluding the 4122 cleaners), the staff structures in the Ministry of Kampala and Metropolitan Affairs, the RCCs and their staff, as well as members of the various statutory bodies in KCCA,” he noted.
Additionally, Lukwago noted that for KCCA as an institution to achieve the major goal of revitalizing Kampala into a well-functioning, resilient, vibrant, and inclusive city, it should push for the amendment of the KCC Act to iron out the ambiguities, adding that streamlining the KCCA governance structure and creating a leaner, more efficient framework that reduces public spending and improves coherence.
“The phenomenon of presidential directives in Kampala should be drastically trimmed. All Authority Councilors and Mayors of Division Urban Councils should be required to possess a minimum qualification equivalent to that of a Member of Parliament because they are capital city planners with both policy-making and oversight mandates,” Lukwago noted.
He further stated that new leaders should aggressively advocate for an equitable national budget allocation that reflects Kampala’s massive contribution to the GDP, unlocking essential funding to bridge critical gaps in the KCCA Strategic Plan as well as pushing for the replacement of the current program-based budgeting framework with a sector-based budgeting model to ensure that city development priorities receive necessary focus.
Ronald Nsubuga Balimwezo, who failed to attend the handover ceremony due to alleged illness, ousted Erias Lukwago in the January 22nd, 2026, Kampala Lord Mayoral election.
