For several decades now, Kampala’s biggest problem was the anonymity of its plots, homes, buildings and streets.
The lack of an efficient and organised naming system, brought in a culture where directions are offered by using natural landmarks such as building names, stones, hills, churches, mosques, or now, boda boda stages. This made Uganda’s capital one of the worst navigable cities in the world. Until two years ago when Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) embarked on numbering the city’s Properties, naming streets and installing road signage.
Besides, with the explosive growth in the city’s population as well as the corresponding stress in the City’s infrastructure, the need to manage the City’s assets such as Roads, Drains, Flyovers, Vehicle Parking bays, Drains & Channels require to be managed in a coherent, synchronized and organized manner. As should the rapid development of both public and private Property developments in the city. KCCA’s need to be ontop of every single development and align it with the City’s management principles, is a core necessity.
When this project, being undertaken by Technology Associates (TA) is complete in a few month, Kampala will take a giant step towards becoming a fully-fledged smart city, and will receive benefits of an organised ultra-modern metropolis.
A street/physical addressing system is defined by the World Bank as an exercise that makes it possible to identify the location of a plot or dwelling on the ground or to assign an address using a system of maps and signs that give the numbers or names of streets and buildings.
That was the promise made by President Museveni in September 2018 as he ordered that CCTV cameras are added on streets to help curb crime in a bid to make Kampala a safer city. The cameras alone, however, don’t make a city safe but the underlying infrastructure which maps it.
KCCA’s Directorate of Physical Planning has been spearheading the implementation of the City Address Model and Mass Property Valuation System (CAMPV) under the KIIDPII project, funded by the World Bank.
Mr Peter Kaujju, KCCA’sPublic and Corporate Affairs manager in the Executive Director’s Office told Watchdog that under CAM/CAMPV, houses are being numbered, roads named and signage installed. Revenues from the City’s Property ground rents and taxes, Parking and Advertising hoardings will be visible, controlled and collections managed. The issuance of development permits will be controlled and will be automated and online.
Role of Technology Associates
Girisch Nair, Chairman of Technology Associates Group who are implementing the technology platform , together with India based Innowave IT Infrastructure Limited says that the platform includes a Geographical Information System (GIS) that will work as an integrated solution for CAM manage property taxes, street naming and identification in the city.
The system involves picking coordinates and other property attributes and uploading them onto the digital system using Geographical Positioning System (GPS) which picks coordinates and feed them into their system.
The integrated solution includes property, document management and smart permits (SP) modules and with this people will be able to apply for documents, advertising, construction permits and leases from the KCCA.
“This project is completely an integrated solution. All property management issues will be managed under a single window system. It will be very easy for KCCA to monitor all property in the city and here they will be able to identify illegal structures, property tax defaulters among others,” Jaymala Kanagala, Project Manager told Watchdog Uganda.
“The system will also be timesaving since people will not have move to KCCA officers every now and then applying for documents. They just have to access the single window system, a web portal, submit their application and wait for the quick response.”
Mr Nair adds that the project will also promote transparency between citizens and KCCA for example if people want to know anything about their property, application status or anything, they don’t have to visit KCCA offices, they could just check on the web portal to get all the information they want. Also, it will increase the authority’s revenue since they will be able to monitor property to ascertain their status.
When the project is completely done,Mr Nair says they will embark on training KCCA staff and citizens to ensure that they get proper knowledge on how to use the system.
“We shall work with KCCA for migration of existing data to the new system as well as offer training to users.”Mr Nair emphasized.
KCCA chose an experienced contractor TA, an ICT Group with a solid and well established presence in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Malawi and UAE. TA is the region’s first ISO 9002 and ISO 27001 IT company, and it has been delivering quality IT solutions to East Africa’s leading corporate, multinationals and the government sectors through partnerships with the world’s leading IT vendors that include Oracle, Dell EMC, HP, ,NetApp, VMWare, Diebold Nixdorf, Veridos and many More.
