A few weeks ago, I did something I had not done in a while. I walked through downtown Kampala, with no rush to get anywhere. I just wanted to feel the city. And as I moved from Kampala Road through Nakasero, down towards Luwum Street and into the busy arteries that once overflowed with unrestrained activity, something felt different. The pavements were clearer. The air felt lighter.
The usual clutter of kiosks, containers, and makeshift stalls had thinned out. There was a visible effort at cleanliness, a sense of order reclaiming space where chaos once held sway. I wouldn't say it was perfect or polished, but it was unmistakable. Something had shifted. The tide is changing, as a colleague would later put it.
For years, Kampala's pavements were no longer for walking. They had become markets of necessity, spaces of improvisation, zones where survival overtook structure. Hawkers spread across walkways. But in recent months, that long-standing disorder has been confronted.
From Kampala Road to Luwum Street, from Nakasero to Kisekka, enforcement has moved with clarity, restoring pavements to pedestrians, clearing vendors from critical junctions, and reasserting that a city must first function before it can flourish. This is not just urban tidying. It is an affirmation that public space must serve the public. The tide is changing.
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The same tide is evident along roadsides and highways across the country. Those containers and kiosks that had gradually transformed road reserves into permanent private extensions are being dismantled or relocated.
Such structures blocked visibility, narrowed roads, and increased the risk of accidents. Their removal is not just cosmetic; it is corrective. Where they've been removed, sightlines for drivers have been restored, and infrastructure expansion is now possible. But beyond restoring order, this is also a tell-tale sign that legality is beginning to matter again in the use of public land. The tide is changing.
The blaring sirens and strobe lights that had become the unofficial entitlement of all manner of vehicles--private escorts, improvised convoys, self-appointed "very important" motorists--are reducing.
The roads are beginning to sound normal again. So too is the conduct behind the wheel. Driving on pavements, once an almost routine act in peak-hour Kampala, especially along Jinja Road and Entebbe Road, is reducing. The tide is changing.
The tide is changing in Kampala's sanitation story too, and perhaps nowhere is that more visible than in the impactful emptying of overflowing latrines and toilets under what public reporting has described as Operation Dark Matter.
In a city where more than 90 percent of households rely on pit latrines of inadequate standard, where nearly 45 percent of pits are abandoned within five years because they become full or break down, and where less than 45 percent of faecal sludge is safely collected, transported, and treated, the emptying of pits is not cosmetic work; it is public health protection in its most basic form.
It reduces overflow into drains, lowers human contact with untreated waste, cuts foul exposure in dense settlements, and helps slow the conditions that breed water-borne disease, especially during rainy periods. The tide is changing.
The transformation extends to the environment itself. Drainage channels are being cleared, illegal dumping is being penalised, and waste collection is intensifying. Areas that once held stagnant waste are seeing movement--of trucks, of enforcement, of expectation. The tide is changing.
Movement within the city is also being reimagined. For years, boda bodas and matatus have operated in a largely unregulated manner within the central business district. Many times, they stop anywhere; they load from anywhere; every junction is an informal stage.
The result has been congestion, reduced safety, and a breakdown of predictability. But the next phase seems rather clear: boda bodas and matatu operations in Kampala are to be streamlined to operate from authorised points. The tide is changing.
The tide is changing in the building sector, and this may be one of the most consequential reforms yet. The recently strengthened building-control regime now gives authorities real power to inspect, halt unsafe works, enforce permits, and penalise illegal construction.
The era of "build first, regularise later" is being challenged. Safer buildings mean lives saved. Risky sites are being stopped early, and occupation controlled before use. A sector once shaped by shortcuts is being reorganised around professionalism, accountability, and safety. The value of doing things right is finally being enforced. The tide is changing.
Accountability, too, is slowly sharpening. Corruption has not disappeared. But its comfort is being disturbed. Its predictability is being broken. Its risk is rising. The tide is changing.
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Even beyond Uganda's borders, this shift is beginning to register. Greater engagement, deeper conversations. Uganda is being noticed not just for what it says, but for what it is doing. The tide is changing.
Of course, no tide turns without resistance. Every effort to restore order disrupts an existing comfort with disorder. Every enforcement action creates friction. There are complaints, there is discomfort, there are moments of tension. But that is the nature of transformation. The question is not whether change will be contested; it is whether it will endure. For now, the direction is clear. The signals are consistent. The momentum seems real.
Uganda is not yet where it must be. The journey is still unfolding. But something fundamental is underway. I see it as a determined reassertion of order over chaos, of discipline over drift, of values over convenience. The tide is changing.
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Mr Crispin Kaheru is a member of the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC)
