Message

Welcome to the Uganda Road Fund (URF) website. This website is an important forum in which URF interfaces with stakeholders, designated agencies, the general public, and other major role players in the road sector.

Consistent with the trend in most developing countries over the last two decades, Uganda pursueds reforms in the road sub-sector with the aim of principally separating policy roles from the actual delivery of road management functions.  The driving principle has been the commercialization of road management by bringing them into the marketplace, charging for their use on a fee-for-service basis, and managing them like a business enterprise. This involves housing the three key road management roles of policy setting, financing and works implementation under separate but complementary and accountable public institutions.

Uganda Road Fund (URF) as one product of such reforms was born in 2008 with the enactment of the Uganda Road Fund Act. With a mandate to provide adequate and stable financing for maintenance of the 80,000km public roads in Uganda, principally from road user charges (RUCs). The key designated agencies for the maintenance of public roads in Uganda include; Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) for the 21,000km national roads, Kampala Capital City Authority for 1200km of Kampala City roads, districts for the 22,500km district roads, and municipalities for the 4,500km urban roads.  There is a sub-agency arrangement between districts and sub-counties for the upkeep of the 30,000km community access roads (CARs).

The Fund is supervised by seven Board of Director members with the private-sector majority. The board oversees a lean thirty staff secretariat that was ope-rationalized in January 2010, to coincide with the start of the second half of the financial year 2009/10.

The Fund aspires with the principles of the economy, efficiency,  and effectiveness in its operations. It also seeks to operate in a business-like manner, while remaining responsive to customer needs. These principles will move public roads away from the normal budgetary allocation process, into a market domain that embraces paying for use of roads under a ‘fee-for-service’ arrangement.

Over the last eight years of operation, there is evidence that it has had an impact on various aspects of road condition improvement, management, principality by instilling a sense of responsibility among institutions and of ownership among road users. There is an awakening in the industry that there is an institution that is mandated by law to “purchase” and measure road maintenance on behalf of road users to whom it is wholly accountable. Road users equally expect good roads not as a favor, but as a right based on the fee-for-service charges they pay for use of road space.

We shall endeavor to maintain this website for the purposes of communication with all key players in the sector and for public information purposes.

Thank you.
Dr. Eng. Andrew G. Naimanye