MASAKA — Kyanamukaka Town Council has moved from a coffee-growing village setting to a gazetted urban authority, with new premises, a maternity ward, road works, water extensions and youth training now visible in the area.
Mayor Zaina Nakidde says the council offices sit on six acres of land given by former Vice-President Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi. The premises, in the Kyambazi suburbs, were completed in the last two years under her leadership.
Nakidde said the council has secured a maternity ward, with delivery equipment from Rotary Club, and that children are immunised in villages and followed up in schools. “We received the delivery machines from Rotary Club, and our children are immunised in villages. We monitor them even in schools,” she said.
She said water is being extended to Buyinja and Zzimwe wards, and that roads including Bukunda and Kamuzinda–Kyanamukaka are under construction, with the town-council stretch being tarmacked. COP Primary School in Zzimwe Ward has six classrooms tabled for construction. On a 10-acre site, the council is also benefiting from Resident District Commissioner’s quarters and the ongoing construction of Masaka District headquarters.
“I want to credit Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi for extending electricity, and in February we expect all Masaka District households to have electricity, according to the engineers’ assurance,” Nakidde said.
From July to June, 15 youths underwent six months of industrial training at the Presidential Industrial Hub in Ndegeya. Nakidde said the council has also supported youth and women with coffee and passion fruit, and trained women and youth on land management and law and order in five wards, with plans to move into villages.
She accused area MP Richard Sebamala and Woman MP Joan Namutawe of doing little to lobby for services over five years, and of often missing community planning meetings. “For the five years, they have been silent in lobbying for the community,” she said.
The council is already gazetted, she said, but lacks funds, a physical planner and other staff. “What we lack is funding, as well as a physical planner and other employees,” she said.
Masaka District Chairman John Kakande, who is studying public administration and economics at Kampala University, said the district is blessed with leaders who have contributed to its development. He linked recent works to proposals and submissions associated with Ssekandi, received through his grandson, Oscar Mutebi, in the last financial year and the current one.
Mutebi, speaking to residents at Diimo near Lake Victoria, said he prefers service delivery to political campaigning. “For me, it is better to deliver services to people than to walk the grapevine of politics. It is through serving people that you create a good identity,” he said.
In December 2025, government distributed 20,000 coffee seedlings to farmers in Kyesiiga Sub-county through an initiative associated with Ssekandi. Mutebi supervised the handover. The seedlings were meant to raise household incomes through coffee.
He has also used the Oscar Cup to mobilise youth in Kyanamukaka, with equipment, trophies and cash rewards, spoken to students at St Mugaga Secondary School, and pledged computers for ICT at Molly and Paul Secondary School.
Ssekandi, the first law graduate from Makerere University to come from Masaka District, served as Vice-President under President Yoweri Museveni and is now the President’s Special Envoy on political affairs.
For Kyanamukaka, the test of decentralisation is no longer the gazette. It is whether the maternity ward, water points, roads, power lines, classrooms and youth training can be staffed and funded after the buildings are up.
The writer, Brian Mugenyi, is a journalist and a student of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kampala University.
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