How the Corona virus outbreak has affected Uganda

The Corona virus outbreak that is threatening to be a worldwide pandemic, has affected some countries that haven't yet reported any outbreak. 

A medic attending to suspected victims

This has been realized economically due to the hiking of prices of some products that mainly come from China. Uganda is also among the countries that are suffering due to the corona virus outbreak indirectly.

Most affected are the Uganda government infrastructure projects that are funded by the Chinese government. Here we are talking about stalling upwards to about 90 percent of the country's major road constructions.

This was announced after the Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) spokesperson Mark Ssali said that an assessment of the overall impact is being made, but confirmed that construction has slowed down a bit!

It's not only the road constructions that have been affected, but also other projects involving Chinese workers. The Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited head of communications, Simon Kasyate in a speech regretted the timing of the outbreak when most of the workers had flown to their country China. The company contracted two Chinese firms to construct two mega dams at Isimba and Karuma.

In his words he said, "Most had gone for their leave for the lunar new year. They are experiencing delays on return and they have to be quarantined for another 14 days upon their return. That obviously has given us a bit of time lag though it has not had a substantial impact"

He emphasized that the impact would have been worse had Isimba and Karuma projects not already made progress. Isimba hydro power dam, a 183MW project in Kayunga district along River Nile, was handed over to the government last year, but some staff of the contractors remained on site for a defect liabilities period, which is a technical contractual requirement for the contractor to identify and fix any minor defects before handing over the project.

Isimba dam

Mr Kasyate said for karuma, a 600MW dam at karuma falls on River Nile, that works now stand above 96 per cent and most of the equipment was either already on site or at sea. For Karuma the contract was on capacity building, therefore Ugandans had been trained and are able to work with the few Chinese that remained on site.

The Ministry of Health confirmed that a group of 100 china returnees that included Ugandans and Chinese nationals completed the 14-day self-quarantine on Saturday without showing any signs of the virus.

The Ministry’s permanent secretary Dr Diana Atwine told the East African that the country has the capacity to test the virus. "We are able to conduct the tests locally".

In a speech the president of Uganda said, "Take personal precautions, and look out for your colleagues too. The government will take all measures to safeguard you as well. Meanwhile, we shall keep studying this Coronavirus," he concluded.

China has invested vastly in the African countries with the value of investment and contracts in three years between 2015 and 2018 totalling to $299 billion in the sub-Saharan Africa, according to the China Investment Global tracker.