In the first week of August, National Water and Sewerage Corporation put a date on a complaint that has run for years. By August 2027, the corporation says, the upgrades to the Greater Kampala distribution network will be finished and the routine dry taps in the city's higher suburbs will end.
Production is not the bottleneck
The corporation's managing director, Dr Eng Silver Mugisha, has been consistent on the diagnosis: NWSC currently has enough treatment capacity to serve the city. The failure sits in the pipes between the plant and the household, much of it laid for a smaller Kampala and now carrying pressure it was never sized for.
The corporation set out the timeline and the scale of the works in early August, reported by Uganda Update News alongside its wider investment programme.
What a burst main looks like from the tap
The gap between plan and daily life was on show the same week. Damage to a high level main during construction works on Old Portbell Road cut supply to parts of Bugolobi, Lugogo By-pass and Mackenzie Vale, with tankers deployed while crews carried out repairs. These interruptions are not headline events. They are the ordinary texture of a network under strain.
We can produce the water. Getting it up the hill through a pipe from another decade is the work.
The money behind the promise
NWSC has pointed to a multi-trillion shilling investment programme covering production, transmission and network renewal. The test of that spending will not be the ribbon cuttings, but whether pressure holds in the same suburbs during the next dry spell.
Outside the city the same question is asked differently. In the eastern districts the measure is not pressure but whether a pump turns, as we set out in our report on community water access in eastern Uganda .
Frequently asked questions
- When will Kampala's water shortages end?
- NWSC has said the major upgrades to the Greater Kampala distribution network should be complete by August 2027, at which point it expects persistent shortages to stop.
- Why does Kampala have water shortages if there is enough treated water?
- The corporation attributes the shortages to ageing distribution mains and pressure limitations in the network rather than to a shortfall in treatment capacity.
- Who supplies piped water in Kampala?
- National Water and Sewerage Corporation, a state owned utility, supplies piped water and sewerage services in Kampala and other urban areas of Uganda.
- NWSC announces plans to expand water coverage in Kampala - Uganda Update News
- NWSC sets 2027 deadline to complete water coverage in Kampala and its suburbs - The Investigator News
- NWSC speaks out on water shortages and its investment programme - Daily Post Uganda
- National Water and Sewerage Corporation - NWSC
Grace Nabirye investigates land, water and energy projects and their effect on households, with long-running coverage of the Albertine region and urban water supply.
- Land and resettlement
- Urban water supply
- Energy projects
