KAMPALA – On Uganda’s highways, cars slow down at some busy market spots, windows roll down, and hands reach out for skewers of roasted chicken, beef, or goat, hot, cheap, and ready to eat. Vendors rush forward, arms heavy with skewers of this sought-after meat, still sizzling from charcoal stoves. In minutes, the exchange is done. Traffic moves on.
It feels efficient. Familiar. Harmless.
But beneath the smoke and speed of these roadside markets lies a far more fragile system, one that quietly trades convenience for risk. A new study examining Uganda’s busiest highway meat markets reveals a troubling reality: most of the food being sold to travelers is prepared in environments where clean water is scarce, waste goes unmanaged, and basic sanitation falls far below minimum standards.
These markets are not marginal spaces. They are economic lifelines, feeding thousands of commuters every day and sustaining hundreds of vendors. Yet the very informality that makes them accessible also leaves them dangerously exposed. As demand for cheap, ready-to-eat food grows alongside urbanisation and mobility, the gap between what is sold and what is safe is widening, turning a roadside meal into a potential public health hazard.
What happens when speed overtakes safety? And who bears the cost when the system fails?
A recent study by researchers Bagumire and Karumuna, published in the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development, takes a close look at what happens behind the stalls in two of Uganda’s busiest highway markets; Lukaya and Najembe. What it finds is not an isolated lapse, but a system under strain, where demand has outpaced infrastructure, and where public health risks have become normalized.
The researchers assessed 41 meat stalls and surveyed 180 vendors. Their findings point to a troubling gap between what vendors believe they are doing right and the conditions consumers actually face. Waste management, for instance, is largely absent. Nearly eight in 10 stalls had no waste collection system at all, no bins, no sacks, no designated disposal points. Most vendors did not sort waste, and many lacked even the most basic tools to handle it safely. In a setting where meat scraps, ash, and packaging pile up quickly, this creates fertile ground for contamination.
Water, the most basic ingredient of hygiene, is also in short supply. While many stalls had some access to water, only about a third had enough for routine handwashing and cleaning. Even then, quality was a serious concern. Dirty containers and questionable water sources meant that just 5 percent of vendors scored highly on water safety. In practical terms, this often translated into reused water and unwashed food, practices that vendors themselves acknowledged, even as they insisted their premises were clean.
Sanitation facilities tell a similar story. Toilets in Najembe, shared communally, were rated poorly, with some serving as many as 88 people per latrine, more than three times the World Health Organization’s recommended maximum. Neither Lukaya nor Najembe had proper wastewater drainage systems. Waste, once generated, had nowhere to go.
These conditions are not accidental. Uganda’s roadside meat trade sits squarely within the informal economy, shaped by rapid urbanization, rising demand for affordable food, and limited public investment. Vendors work from makeshift stalls of wood and papyrus, cooking over charcoal stoves known locally as sigili. For many, this trade is the difference between income and hunger. Regulation, where it exists, is often light or inconsistently enforced.
Yet the risks extend far beyond individual meals. Poor sanitation in ready-to-eat foods is closely linked to outbreaks of cholera, food poisoning, and other gastrointestinal diseases. When consumers fall ill, trust in informal food markets erodes. Vendors lose business. Local governments lose revenue. What begins as a public health problem quickly becomes an economic one.
The study’s recommendations are practical but urgent. More than two-thirds of vendors lacked basic hygiene knowledge, pointing to the need for mandatory sanitation training. Infrastructure, clean water, waste collection, and functional latrines cannot remain an afterthought if these markets are to remain viable. And without regular inspections and enforcement, standards will continue to exist only on paper.
Uganda’s highway meat markets are unlikely to disappear. If anything, they will grow as travel increases and cities expand. The question is whether they will continue to operate in a grey zone where convenience trumps safety, or whether they can be integrated into a food system that protects both livelihoods and lives.
For now, the study offers a stark reminder: the roadside meal that fuels a journey may also carry unseen risks. Addressing them will require not just better practices from vendors, but a serious commitment from authorities to treat informal food markets as what they already are, essential, enduring, and deserving of investment.