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NSSF Reaches Agreement for Financing the Kampala–Jinja Expressway
The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) says it has committed to financing the Kampala–Jinja Expressway, subject to the project reaching investment readiness.
Key Takeaways
The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) says it has committed to financing the Kampala–Jinja Expressway, subject to the project reaching investment readiness.
The expressway is a long-running public-private partnership (PPP) project whose feasibility study dates back to 2017 and which has subsequently gone through procurement and transaction-structuring stages.
The project developer procurement process had been delayed by uncertainty over government liquidity support, but resumed after government confirmed a Partial Risk Guarantee arrangement.
Financing has remained a major project constraint. Earlier development-partner financing from the EU and AFD expired in December 2024, while government has been seeking alternative sources to bridge the financing gap.
Land acquisition is also incomplete. As of the latest AfDB project reporting, 49.6 km of the 94-km corridor had been acquired, with 4,505 of an estimated 16,000 Project Affected Persons compensated.
Why it matters
The significance of NSSF's commitment is not that the Kampala–Jinja Expressway has suddenly become a new project. It is that a long-prepared PPP may now have access to a large domestic institutional investor capable of addressing part of its financing requirement.
NSSF Managing Director Patrick Ayota said the Fund would not release funds until the project is ready for investment. That distinction is important: a financing commitment is not the same as financial close or commencement of construction.
For a project that has spent years moving through feasibility, procurement, land acquisition and financing arrangements, the next question is therefore whether the NSSF commitment can help resolve the remaining conditions required to reach financial close and move the project into implementation.
