In O’level Geography, one of the topics was on the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a government-owned corporation created in 1933. TVA was initially founded as an agency to provide general economic development to the Tennessee River region through power generation, flood control, navigation assistance, fertilizer manufacturing, and agricultural development.
In the course of discussions on how best to review the academic curriculum of Uganda and how to make it more applicable to today’s environment in terms of marketability and finding solutions to existing problems, I have seen critics attacking the curriculum that introduced such topics as TVA to us.
That- and other lessons such as about the Canadian prairies- have been blamed for the saturation of the job market with graduates in “irrelevant” courses, who can hardly justify why they went to school.
By all means, our curriculums at all levels should be tailored to fit and serve our circumstances-instruction that speaks to us.
Looking at the devastating floods that have ravaged Kampala in during recent heavy rains, however, I see how lessons from the TVA era are relevant in our circumstances.
What would the Tennessee Valley authorities do if they were in charge of Kampala? The “distant” lessons we had back then were not to prepare us to go and live and work in the US, or Canada or to cram and pass exams just. The best learners were supposed to carry the example of the TVA and apply it to our situation when need arose.
Kampala doesn’t have a major river going through it but it neighbours a big lake, Victoria (Nalubaale). The city also gathers storm water that clogs its constructed channels and the natural carryover points. Hence, the floods that affected us all; killed people and damaged buildings, infrastructure and vehicles. They also disrupted business and living conditions in a way that spells doom if each subsequent year things got worse.
These floods add on the unfortunate kiteezi landfill disaster of August last year which was a consequence of poor planning and mismanagement of garbage disposal in the city over decades.
Other times, buildings under construction cave in, there is a long-running problem of traffic jam and congestion, and a litany of other challenges speaking to the urgent need for proper physical planning and rehabilitation of Kampala.
In January, a new Executive Director, Ms. Sharifah Buzeki, and a Deputy, Mr. Benon Kigenyi, were appointed to head Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA). They found a backlog of issues to attend to. One cannot easily predict how long it will take to bring the city to standard, where floods, potholes, unplanned structures, garbage “bombs”, traffic jam and congestion, etc, are a thing of history. Controlling floods is going to be a big assignment during their tenure.
The founding of KCCA, taking over from KCC (Kampala City Council), opened a new chapter in Kampala’s management as a modern metropolis akin to how TVA was founded to overcome the aftermath of the great depression. TVA transformed the Tennessee Valley basin from one of the least developed places in the US with malaria, poverty, floods, and general underdevelopment squeezing the place, to the largest public utility (supplying electricity) throughout the Eastern United States.
From what was once flood-ravaged territory, up to 29 power dams were constructed to harness the force of the waters, thus mitigating against the floods and channeling them in generate electricity. Kampala’s flood waters aren’t from a single source to gather so much force to turn turbines to churn out electricity, unless a bright hydrologist can look at that possibility and advise accordingly. So, the immediate challenge is how to stop from them endangering Kampalans.
Flooding results when the natural catchment of runoff water is displaced or when channels for directing it are blocked or narrow. An obvious cause of flooding in Uganda’s capital is the reclamation of wetlands and low-lying areas and constructing structures there. From Namanve, Banda, Kyambogo, Lugogo, Jinja road main junction; Nateete, Namasuba and some stretches along the Northern bypass, the most affected places have a history of being swampy. President Yoweri Museveni has consistently advised and warned against environmental abuse to no avail. The floods are nature’s affirmation of his appeals which, in some ears, are like the appeals of the Biblical Noah before a global deluge came upon the earth and decimated all those that didn’t board the ark.
To save Kampala (and the country at large), please, board President Museveni’s “environmental damage repentance ark”! When natural water circulation zones are destroyed, nature forces its way through the man-made developments and usually has its way to the detriment of encroachers.
National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) should step up its operations and ensure that all development is environmentally-friendly without exception.
Flooding also results from lack of a proper drainage system. KCCA is currently undertaking wide-ranging infrastructural realignment. The magnitude of the flooding witnessed should inform the design of the drainage system needed so that no amount of rainfall will threaten to submerge the city right before our eyes. For rapidly transforming urban centers with ballooning populations, excellent planning isn’t an option. Infrastructure should stand the test of time and serve generations.
Kampala has room to accommodate more people (from the present estimated 4million) and sustainably so. All it will take is adopting and enforcing a strict culture of responsible land use and living. These disasters happening should be the birth pangs for a new and modern Kampala that is “all-weather” and attractive to indigenous citizens and “TVA” foreigners eager to learn from us.
The author is the Special Presidential Assistant-Press & Mobilisation/Deputy Spokesperson
Email: faruk.kirunda@statehouse.go.ug
0776980486/0783990861
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