Developing Uganda’s Expressways as Perpetual Pavements in Support of Africa’s Continental Free Trade Area Implementation.

Abstract

The successful implementation of Africa’s Continental Free Trade Area will rely on efficient movement of goods and services – by road, rail, air, and water – on the continent with road transport currently being the most dominant. Despite its significant contribution, road transport in Africa is impaired by lack of roads, lack of roads in good condition, and lack of roads operating at acceptable levels of service. To address these problems, the Ugandan government plans to upgrade several roads entering Kampala Capital City to four or more lane expressways.

This paper explores the design and construction of these projects as perpetual pavements—these are durable asphalt concrete pavements that are designed to last 50 years (as compared to the traditional asphalt pavements that are designed to last 10-20 years) without significant structural rehabilitation. One of these expressways is the Kampala-Jinja Expressway (KJE). KJE will be constructed South of the existing Kampala-Jinja highway which is the highest trafficked road in Uganda and is part of the Trans-African Highway 8 Network.

KJE is a crucial section of the Northern Corridor, linking the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa with the Atlantic Ocean port of Matadi, and serves as a vital import/export route for landlocked Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). KJE will span 97km composed of three sections: Kampala Southern Bypass (20 km), Kampala – Namagunga (35 km), and Namagunga – Jinja (42 km). The total estimated cost is US$1.55 billion. The funding will be obtained through a 30-year (5 years for construction and 25 years for operation) public-private partnership (PPP) arrangement. It is projected that the traffic for the Namagunga – Jinja section will be 57 million ESALs (Traffic Class T10) for 25 years design life (2029-2054) and 175 million ESALs (Traffic Class T10) for the 50-year design life (2029-2079).

This case study findings are that designing this pavement as a perpetual pavement requires no additional pavement layer to the traditional design to extend the road’s lifespan from 25 years to 50 years.