KAMPALA — Three months after Kampala’s controversial trade order crackdown began, the city looks visibly different.
Pedestrian walkways once swallowed by roadside stalls have reopened. Traffic flows more steadily through parts of the central business district. Newly painted road markings are reappearing, drainage channels are being cleared and stretches of downtown Kampala that had long dissolved into congestion now carry an unfamiliar sense of order.
For city authorities, this is proof that the operation is working.
But beneath the cleaner streets and tighter enforcement lies a more complicated reality — one that continues to divide traders, residents and policymakers over what exactly has changed in Kampala since the evictions began, and what has not.
In a statement presented at the Uganda Media Centre, Kampala Capital City Authority Executive Director Sharifah Buzeki defended the ongoing operation as part of a broader attempt to “restore order, improve infrastructure, and strengthen urban management across our city.”
The campaign followed a government directive issued on February 5, 2026, with enforcement beginning two weeks later on February 19. Since then, KCCA says it has moved aggressively to reorganise trade, decongest the capital and reclaim public spaces.
The physical transformation is difficult to miss.
According to KCCA, major business corridors including Luwum Street, Namirembe Road, Ben Kiwanuka Street, Nakivubo Road and Allen Road have been cleared of illegal vending and obstructions. Similar operations have extended into busy trading centres in Kawempe, Makindye, Lubaga and Nakawa divisions.
Roads are being repainted. Drainage systems are being repaired and desilted. Streetlights are being restored. Manholes resealed. Green spaces revived.
“These interventions are already enhancing mobility, reducing congestion, and improving safety for all road users,” Buzeki said.
KCCA also points to a sharp rise in business formalisation since enforcement began. Between February 19 and April 27, the authority registered 22,909 new business licences worth Shs5.07 billion, compared to 15,628 licences worth Shs3.9 billion in the preceding period.
To city officials, the increase signals something larger than compliance. It suggests that businesses operating informally on streets are slowly being pulled into the formal urban economy, where they can be taxed, regulated and monitored.
Yet the deeper tensions surrounding the operation have not disappeared.
The eviction of street vendors triggered widespread anxiety among thousands of small traders who depended on roadside sales for survival. While KCCA insists alternatives exist, many traders argue that relocation to gazetted markets has not automatically translated into customers or income.
The authority says 2,520 workspaces were made available in public and private markets, with 1,663 already occupied and 857 still vacant as of April 30. In Busega Market alone, 107 stalls reportedly remained unused for more than 90 days and are now being reallocated under the Markets Act 2023.
That gap reveals one of the central contradictions of Kampala’s urban reforms.
The city may have created trading spaces, but traders still gravitate toward streets with heavy human traffic because visibility often determines daily survival. A stall inside a market is only valuable if customers follow.
KCCA, however, has made clear there will be no return to the old system.
“Trade order is non-negotiable and must be sustained,” Buzeki said, referring to Cabinet’s reaffirmation of the operation on April 27.
The crackdown is now expanding beyond vending.
Property owners and businesses have been directed to improve building frontages by paving, painting, greening and maintaining cleanliness around their premises. Starting June 1, KCCA says it will begin enforcement measures that could include closure of non-compliant premises.
Transport reforms are also accelerating.
Boda boda riders are being pushed into designated stages and registration systems, while taxis are being directed back into gazetted parks to reduce roadside congestion. At the same time, government has authorised Kiira Motors buses to begin pilot operations in Kampala by the end of May, deploying eight electric buses along two circular city routes.
The message from city authorities is unmistakable: Kampala is being redesigned around regulation, formalisation and controlled movement.
But some of Kampala’s oldest problems remain stubbornly intact.
Poverty has not disappeared because vendors left the streets. Informal work still dominates the city economy. Youth unemployment remains high. Thousands continue arriving in Kampala searching for survival in a city already stretched by population growth and weak urban planning.
Even KCCA’s ongoing rescue of street children reflects those unresolved pressures.
In the last three months alone, the authority says it rescued 365 children — 163 boys and 202 girls — from city streets. Of these, 193 were transferred to Napak District, while 183 children were enrolled at Ladoi Primary School. Some required antenatal care after early pregnancies, while 12 parents were taken to court over negligence cases.
The numbers reveal something uncomfortable: the disorder KCCA is confronting is not merely physical. It is social and economic too.
For decades, Kampala expanded faster than its systems could manage. Informal trading, roadside transport stages and unregulated settlements became not exceptions, but survival mechanisms in a rapidly growing city.
Now the state is attempting to reverse that reality.
Whether the reforms ultimately succeed may depend on whether order is matched with opportunity. Cleaner roads and stricter enforcement may improve mobility and aesthetics, but without broader economic absorption, many displaced traders could simply re-emerge elsewhere.
For now, Kampala stands in transition — cleaner, stricter and more regulated than before, yet still wrestling with the deeper inequalities that pushed so many people onto its streets in the first place.
The city has changed.
But the pressures beneath it have not.