Uganda’s rural electrification programme came under renewed scrutiny in Parliament on Thursday, with Members of Parliament warning that thousands of communities remain without reliable electricity despite the installation of power poles and distribution lines.
The debate over the Government’s rural electrification statement has increasingly shifted from the scale of infrastructure being rolled out to whether communities are actually being connected, with MPs demanding clearer accountability for unfinished projects and persistent electricity gaps.
Some legislators warned that failure to deliver electricity to underserved communities could have political consequences as voters increasingly assess government performance through access to basic services.
Mawokota North MP Amelia Kyambadde said her constituency has an electricity coverage rate of only 27.9 percent, despite recently becoming part of the Kampala Metropolitan Area.
Kyambadde urged Government to prioritise electricity connections for value-addition centres, health facilities and schools, arguing that infrastructure investments cannot deliver their full economic and social benefits without reliable power.
“They have worked on the roads, they have worked on the market, but we have no electricity,” she said.
She also called for greater attention to alternative energy sources, particularly in areas where extending the national grid remains difficult.
“What about the alternative energy, for example like solar, solar energy, wind power, we have not mentioned them in your statement,” Kyambadde said.
City status leaves some areas without power
The electrification challenge was also raised in relation to Uganda’s newer cities, whose boundaries have expanded to incorporate predominantly rural communities.
Karim Masaba, the MP for Industrial Division in Mbale City, said large parts of the newly created urban areas still lack the infrastructure expected of cities.
“You’ll find that majority or the biggest part of these cities is still the rural part of the city,” Masaba said.
He further raised concerns over contractors who allegedly abandoned earlier electrification projects after erecting poles and installing sections of distribution lines without completing connections.
Masaba questioned why some contractors involved in unfinished projects were subsequently being awarded new contracts under the World Bank-funded Electricity Access Scale-up Project.
“We have many contractors and sub-contractors who abandoned the projects, who planted the poles, some of them just dropped them there and didn’t connect,” he said.
He urged the Ministry responsible for energy to first ensure that abandoned projects are completed before contractors move on to new assignments.
“Why don’t they come and first connect and complete the lines and programmes that they started on?” Masaba asked.
Kapelebyong says some communities have no poles
The most acute gap was highlighted by Kapelebyong County MP Francis Akorikin, who said the electricity challenge in his district is more fundamental than unreliable supply.
While some communities elsewhere have electricity infrastructure that remains unconnected, he said several areas in Kapelebyong do not even have electricity poles.
“While other parts of the country may have electric poles, some of us don’t even have electric poles. Our problems are different,” Akorikin said.
He said eight of Kapelebyong District’s 11 sub-counties remain without electricity and specifically cited Akoromit, Acinga, Okungur and Alito among communities that have yet to receive power.
“We have never seen electricity in Akoramit, we have never seen electricity in Acinga, we have never seen electricity in Okungur, we have never seen electricity in Alito. Please Minister, consider Kapelebyong District,” he said.
The MPs’ concerns expose a wider challenge facing Uganda’s electricity expansion: the difference between infrastructure deployment and actual access.
For communities with poles but no connections, the priority is completing distribution networks and connecting households and institutions. For areas without basic infrastructure, however, the challenge remains extending the network in the first place.
The parliamentary debate is therefore placing renewed pressure on Government to provide a clearer account of where electrification projects stand, why some have stalled and when underserved communities can expect to be connected.
The discussions also underline the growing demand for an approach that combines grid expansion with decentralised solutions such as solar power, particularly for remote communities where conventional grid extension may be costly or slow.
For MPs, the measure of rural electrification is no longer simply the number of kilometres of lines installed or poles erected, but whether electricity reaches the schools, health facilities, businesses and households that need it.
