Kampala City

Kampala is Uganda's national and commercial capital bordering Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake. Hills covered with red-tile villas and trees surround an urban centre of contemporary skyscrapers. In this downtown area, the Uganda Museum explores the country's tribal heritage through an extensive collection of artefacts. On nearby Mengo Hill is Lubiri Palace, the former seat of the Buganda Kingdom.

The city proper has a population of 1,875,834 as per 2024 and is divided into the five political divisions of Kampala Central, Kawempe, Makindye, Nakawa, and Rubaga

Kampala's metropolitan area consists of the city proper and the neighboring Wakiso District, Mukono District, Mpigi District, Buikwe District and Luweero District. It has a rapidly growing population that is estimated at 6,709,900 people in 2019 by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics in an area of 8,451.9 km2 (3,263.3 square miles). Other estimates estimate put the size of the metropolitan area at around four million people.

This area of numerous hills and swamps that later become known as Kampala was part of the core of the highly centralised Buganda Kingdom. It was also the site of the shifting Kibuga (capital) of the different Bassekabaka (kings) of the Buganda Kingdom, with each Kabaka (king) upon coronation, or subsequently during their reign, setting up their Kibuga (capital) on a new and or different hill as they wished or desired.

HISTORY OF THE GREAT KIBUGA (CITY) OF KAMPALA

kampala side view

The first written description of this Kibuga (capital) was by the explorer Sir Richard Burton in his book, The Lake Region of East Africa, published in 1860. In the book, Burton, relying on the information collected by Snay Bin Amir, an Arab trader, described the Kibuga as:

…the settlement is not less than a day's journey in length, the buildings are of cane and rattan. The sultan's (Kabaka) palace is at least a mile long and the circular huts neatly arranged in a line are surrounded by a strong fence which has only four gates.

In 1862, when explorer John Speke arrived in Buganda, the Kibuga (capital) was at Bandabarogo, present-day Banda Hill, and the reigning Kabaka (King) was Mutesa I.

In 1875, explorer Henry Morton Stanley reported the capital as being at present-day Lubaga Hill, where he met the same Kabaka, Mutesa I. During this visit, Stanley wrote a letter that was published in The Daily Telegraph, inviting missionaries to come to Buganda. He also described the Kibuga in his 1870s dispatches to The New York Herald, thus:

As we approached the capital, the highway from Usavara [Busabala] increased in width from 20 ft [6 meters] to 150 ft [45 meters]...Arrived at the capital I found the vast collection of huts crowning the eminence were the Royal Quarters, around which ran several palisades and circular courts, between which and the city was a circular road, ranging from 100 ft [30 meters] to 200 ft [60 meters] in width with gardens and huts...

— Bennet, N.R. (ed.) Stanley's Dispatches to the New York Herald, 1871–1872, 1874–1877, Boston, 1970.

In 1877, the first missionaries from the Church Mission Society, who were of the Protestant faith, arrived from the United Kingdom and were allocated Namirembe Hill. Two years later, in 1879, the Catholic White Fathers also arrived, first settling at the present-day village of Kitebi near Lubaga; subsequently, they would be allocated Lubaga Hill. The arrival of these two missionary groups laid the ground for the religious wars of 1888 to 1892 between their new converts and forced the missionaries from Great Britain to then lobby for the British government to take over Buganda/Uganda as a protectorate.

In 1890, Frederick Lugard, an agent of the Imperial British East Africa Company, arrived in Buganda during the reign of Kabaka Mwanga II, with whom he signed a treaty of protection by the British government over Buganda, and the Kibuga (capital) was located at Mengo Hill. Captain Lugard would, later on, be allocated the Kampala hill that would soon be known as Old Kampala, and on which he built a fort.

view of mengo hill

In 1895, Mengo Senior School, the first school offering Western education in Kampala, was opened by the Church Missionary Society at Namirembe hill, where mostly the children of chiefs and pages of the royal palaces were students.

In 1897, Mwanga launched a rebellion but was defeated and was subsequently captured and exiled, in 1899, to the Seychelles alongside Omukama Kabalega, and his 3-year-old son was made Kabaka by the combined forces of the European officers leading Nubian and Baganda colonial soldiers. This state of affairs later culminated in the signing of the Buganda Agreement (1900) that formalised British colonial rule in Buganda.

Also in 1897, Kampala's first Western-style health facility, Mengo Hospital, was opened on Namirembe hill by British doctor and missionary Sir Albert Ruskin Cook. In addition, Sir Albert Ruskin Cook founded Mulago Hospital, the current National Referral Hospital, at Mulago hill in 1913.

mulago hospital currently