Opinion: “Wano Kumpi Ne Taawo” – Let’s treat addresses like phone numbers 

By Norman Katende

About two decades ago, while a student at Mengo Senior School, I wrote a letter to my mother. Missing her, I addressed it, and a classmate, Godfrey Muzaya, saw it and asked a strange question: “Are you sending it within Uganda?”

He was surprised by how I had addressed it. My mother taught at Kakira Secondary School, and I had written: L.5A, Lower Kabyaza, Kakira, Jinja 25641.

We were used to letters travelling through Post Office Boxes. My mother got the letter and visited me three weeks later.

That experience has stayed with me, because it points to something about Uganda we rarely discuss: we have a serious problem with addresses, and it goes far beyond receiving letters.

Kakira Estate was established in the late 1920s. Its planners understood that an estate was not simply about houses and factories; it was about the future.

They provided electricity, sewerage, water treatment, a hospital, schools, even an airstrip.

A century later, I ask what allowed people then to plan so far ahead, while we still struggle with basic infrastructure today. One of those basics is an address.

Last week, Kampala Lord Mayor Ronald Balimwezo was confronted by residents after a cleaning exercise left rubbish piled on a road.

He called the town clerk to send trucks, assuring residents it would be handled.

What caught my attention was how difficult it was to explain where the rubbish actually was. At one point he said: “Wano kumpi ne taawo” – “Here, near the Tower Bridge”.

He spent nearly a minute describing the spot, with residents chiming in to help. It was almost comical, but also a sobering reminder of how poorly organised our cities remain.

A similar problem surfaced when Minister of State for Works and Transport Fred Byamukama were reportedly given wrong directions while inspecting the delayed Nateete–Nakawuka–Kawuku–Kasanje road project, amid revelations about compensation for apartment shells built to defraud government.

Identifiable addresses would make it far harder to mislead anyone about where a place actually is.

For too long, we have treated addresses as a postal convenience. They are not; they are basic infrastructure for a functioning society.

Without them, it is difficult to organise people, deliver services, collect accurate statistics, plan infrastructure, monitor government programmes, and hold anyone accountable.

Where there is disorder, accountability becomes harder, and corruption finds room to thrive.

During the COVID-19 period. Local leaders were given food and supplies to distribute, but without a reliable way of identifying households, it was hard to know who received what or who was left out.

It was no surprise that much of the foodstuff ended up in shops and restaurants instead.

The same recurs with mosquito nets: a report may claim a village received its nets, a few vocal residents confirm it, while those left out stay silent, often fearing they’ll be labelled troublesome.

An address system would let us move from “we distributed 10,000 nets in this village” to “these specific households received them” a wholly different level of accountability.

I recall a discussion with my former boss, Robert Kabushenga, during the census.

He asked why UBOS could not simply use an online system. My answer: we do not have addresses.

You cannot identify who has filled in a form if you cannot reliably identify where they live, so people get counted twice while others are missed entirely, which affects the data on which government planning depends.

Australia’s census links each address to a unique code, letting households complete the census electronically. Uganda need not copy the model exactly, but the point holds: knowing where people live helps in organising information about them far more effectively.

The problem even extends to political representation.

Uganda’s parliamentary constituencies are geographical, yet MPs represent people.

If one MP serves a small population while another serves a far larger one, is that equal representation?

Constituencies might be redesigned around more comparable sizes, roughly 500,000 to 700,000 people, though that also requires reliable population data, easier to gather once we know where households are.

The recent directive from local government Minister Balaam Barugahara on naming every road, whose deadline passed last week, can help push things forward.

But this cannot rest with one ministry.

Works and Transport, local governments, UBOS, the Uganda Revenue Authority, planning authorities and utilities must all be involved, alongside real incentives for people to adopt the system.

An address should eventually be as normal as a phone number.

When you move into a house, you should know its address; when you register a business, its location should be identifiable; when government delivers a service, it should be possible to say exactly where.

And when someone asks where you live, you shouldn’t have to say “Wano kumpi ne taawo -or- nga oyisse kukayembe.” You should simply give them an address.

That may sound small. It isn’t. A proper address system is invisible infrastructure that quietly makes everything else work better, from delivering a letter to distributing food, conducting a census, collecting taxes, planning roads, fighting corruption, and deciding how fairly people are represented.

Kakira understood the importance of planning more than a century ago. Perhaps it is time the rest of Uganda did too.