By Soita Khatondi Wepukhulu
In the weeks after a section of Uganda’s largest garbage dump site at Kiteezi near the capital Kampala collapsing and killing dozens of people and displacing hundreds, Kampala’s streets began to choke under the weight of uncollected garbage.
With the Kiteezi garbage dump closed, the garbage was hastily diverted to temporary dumping points but these too quickly reached their limits.
By February 2025, KCCA announced what it called a turning point: the acquisition of 230 acres for a new landfill in Buyala, in Mpigi District near Kampala. At a reported price of 70 million shillings per acre, the deal came with bold assurances.
“Our waste management solutions are going to resonate with current times,” the Executive Director, Sharifah Buzeki, said.
The promise, however, was troubled from the outset as the Buyala site was immediately engulfed in controversy. Environmentalists and residents protested that the designated area lay squarely in a wetland called Mayanja. Soon, a National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) report confirmed the worst fears: it said the vast majority of the land was a wetland, with only 1.5 acres deemed suitable for a dumpsite.
At the point of announcement of the Buyala land purchase, according to KCCA’s Director of Public Health, Dr. Sarah Zzalwango, only 15% of the purchase price had been paid. Despite the findings and warnings about environmental damage by NEMA and others, however, the purchase was completed and waste disposal began almost immediately.
New landfill, old habits
Dr. Zzalwango admits the move to Buyala bore all the hallmarks of crisis management rather than careful planning. “The way we moved to Buyala was in an emergency state,” she told Agora. “So we continued to do the same dumping style as in Kiteezi.”
And despite assurances by Buzeki that KCCA would introduce waste management solutions that resonate with current times, the KCCA approach at Buyala mirrors exactly the very operational patterns that contributed to Kiteezi’s collapse: no segregation of waste, no leachate treatment, and no methane management. Authorities have continued to go about waste management in a careless manner, sparking concerns another Kiteezi-like disaster could unfold.
By the time the Kiteezi landfill collapsed on August 09, 2024, the authorities responsible for Kiteezi management had long known about the impending danger, according to government internal memos seen by Agora.
The memos shared with Agora by officials at KCCA reveal a chain of warnings stretching back months before the disaster happened.
In one memo of April 19, 2024, the Acting Supervisor for Landfill Management formally warned the Manager of Solid Waste Management of the “critical nature” of Kiteezi. By then, the Minister of State for Kampala, the area MP, the Lord Mayor, and the Mayor of Kampala Central had all visited the site. Senior KCCA management had also been briefed. His memo listed visible dangers including instability of waste mounds, erosion of road embankments, damage to underground pipes, and risks of “fatalities in cases of bag instability.”
The memo recommendation was unequivocal: decommission Kiteezi, upgrade leachate treatment, capture landfill gas, and close final cells with relocation to new land for future use.
On June 30, 2024, the Officer for Landfill Management reported that there was “critical waste mass movement, a blocked main drainage channel and a depleted area of work.”
By then, Shs3.71 billion of the landfill’s budget allocation had already been spent on stop-gap measures; warning signs, extra equipment, murram backfill, and culvert construction.
On July 02, 2024, the Director of Public Health and Environment took the emergency to KCCA’s top management, requesting an additional Shs1 billion.
A parallel report from the Deputy Director of Strategy confirmed cracks had developed, prompting what was described as “budget-neutral interventions.” These included a public awareness campaign to alert waste pickers and nearby residents. But the Legal Affairs memo admits: “No evidence was availed.”
Chronic funding gaps
Today, as in the days leading to the Kiteezi disaster, KCCA officials are bickering with the Ministry of Finance over funding shortfalls.
KCCA’s Director of Gender, Dr. Sarah Zzalwango, told Agora this month that the city this year requested Shs30 billion for waste management and Shs9 billion for decommissioning Kiteezi but they have gone unanswered by the Ministry of Finance. The central government, she says, insists KCCA first prepare detailed statements of requirements for competitive bidding. The authority has long lacked a budget line for decommissioning Kiteezi, she said.
Today, as in the past, the central government appears determined to leave the KCCA garbage handling budget to donors. In July, KCCA announced a new $1 million (Approx. Shs3.1 billion) UN-Habitat grant from the Government of Japan to stabilise seven acres of the high-risk landfill. The work, meant to last the next eight months, targets methane-heavy, leak-prone areas at risk of eruption.
KCCA has a history of underfunding its waste management. Annual requests for Shs150 billion in 2019/2020 FY were met with allocations as low as Shs2.96 billion. Even in 2023/24, Parliament approved only Shs3.03 billion of a requested Shs305.5 billion — with Kiteezi’s closure repeatedly deferred.
Internal planning documents had long confirmed the site had exceeded its design capacity and that new facilities in Ddundu, Mukono district were suggested. Yet, Ddundu remained on paper, and no action for an alternative landfill was taken until it was too late.
In a maze of bureaucracy and delay, KCCA had even contracted Price Water Coopers back in 2002 to develop a disaster management plan. As of the collapse, only a “draft report” existed.
“Financial constraints and other impediments” had hampered its completion according to internal memos.
Meanwhile, the landfill continued to operate, cracks widening and risking the lives of hundreds of waste pickers and community members in the neighbouring settlements.
KCCA told Agora that its long-term vision for Buyala includes: a material recovery facility to sort and add value to recyclables, dumping only the residue, waste segregation at the source — encouraging households to separate organic, recyclable, and residual waste before it leaves the home and partnerships with mapped entrepreneurs who will buy segregated waste for processing.
But for now, the reality is far from the promise. Waste continues to arrive mixed and unprocessed, dumped on contested land that environmentalists argue should never have been sold for landfill use.
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