The vehicle
An electric van in the 14-seat class, in the blue and white Kampala already reads as a taxi. Charged at a depot, mostly off-peak.
Concept proposal, October 2026
A private, electric answer to Kampala's taxi problem.
eTaxi proposes electric 14-seater taxis that are privately financed and operated, publicly regulated, and tracked live on the rider's phone. This page is the short version. The two documents below carry the detail and every source.
This is a concept. No eTaxis are running, no company has been registered and no money has been raised. Nothing here is an offer, and none of the organisations named have endorsed it. Figures marked indicative come from a published model with stated assumptions.
Why now
On 24 August 2026 the Ministry of Works and Transport and the traffic police began Operation Ganyegenya, a 100-day crackdown on commuter taxis in dangerous mechanical condition across Greater Kampala.1
477taxis seized by 2 October 2026
69repaired and passed the fitness test
408still grounded, plates confiscated
By 15 October, 423 of the 531 taxis tested at the government centres in Namanve and Kawanda had failed, four in every five.9 The test is the vehicle's condition, not its age. No age cap and no ban on 14-seaters was announced.2 But the fleet is old, and on the second day a taxi leader estimated that about three quarters of taxis were off the road. Some fares doubled.3
The crackdown removes unsafe vans. It does not replace them. No financing for owners to renew their vehicles was found in any 2026 report. eTaxi is a proposal for that missing half: a way for an owner with a condemned van to get back on the road in a clean one.
The idea
The service
The same stages and routes. The fare shown before boarding, paid by mobile money. A Masaawo button for your stop. Cameras and a trip link you can send home.
The model
Private money and private operators under public rules. Taxi owners and their associations can lease to own, or hold shares in the operating company, as Cape Town did with its taxi licence holders.5
The data
Every trip, stop, fare and battery cycle is recorded with consent and protected by law. That record runs the fleet today and trains the systems of tomorrow.
The numbers
An energy comparison for one taxi on city routes, base case. Indicative
UGX106,900petrol per day at mid 2026 pump prices
UGX24,553electricity per day at the commercial tariff
77%lower energy cost, about UGX 25.7 million a year
12.5 tof CO2 avoided per taxi per year
Energy only. Vehicle price, maintenance, wages and chargers are not in these figures, and no published price was found for a suitable van. Fuel use is driver-reported, daily distance is derived, and both will be measured in the pilot. Electricity at Shs562.1 per kWh for October to December 2026.4 Over eight years the base-case saving is worth about USD 27,900 at Uganda's average shilling lending rate, or USD 41,000 at the foreign-currency rate. The method and every input are in Appendix A of the proposal.
Data that outlives the fleet
An instrumented fleet is also a measuring instrument for the city. African roads are thin in the public datasets that driving systems learn from.7
From the first day
- Arrival times riders can trust
- Demand forecasts and dispatch by stage and hour
- Fleet management: uptime, charging, battery health
- Driver coaching and crash analysis
As the record grows
- Origin and destination maps for city planners
- Road condition and pothole mapping
- Carbon measurement for climate finance
- Training data for driver assistance and, later, automated vans
Location is personal data under Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act 2019.8 The proposal sets out consent, retention, anonymisation and sharing terms. Kampala already has one open route feed for 14-seater taxis to build on.6
The plan
- 30
Pilot
One corridor, the first year. Measure real distance, energy, fares and demand.
- 300
Corridor rollout
Years two to three. Owners join by lease or shares. Depots and charging follow the routes.
- 2,000
Network scale
Years four to six. A franchise framework with the regulator, and data services for the city.
Fleet sizes are proposed planning targets, not forecasts. Each phase has a gate: the next one starts only if the last one met its measures.
Read it
PDF, full document
The proposal
Background and history, the crackdown, the operating model, system architecture, data and machine learning roadmap, financial case, plan, risks and sources.
Open the proposal
PDF, short read
Executive summary
The problem, the proposal, the numbers and the asks, for a reader with ten minutes.
Open the summary
Sources on this page
- Daily Monitor, 3 October 2026. Only 69 impounded taxis cleared to return to Kampala roads, says Works ministry
- Daily Monitor, 20 August 2026. Govt launches 100-day crackdown on unroadworthy taxis in Greater Kampala
- Daily Monitor, 25 and 26 August 2026. Police soften DMC taxi crackdown after chaos and Commuters stranded in travel chaos
- Daily Monitor, 5 October 2026. UEDCL sets new power tariffs for final quarter
- World Bank PPP Resource Center. Cape Town MyCiTi and taxi industry transition
- Mobility Database, May 2025. Kampala paratransit GTFS feed
- Engineering, Technology and Applied Science Research, 2026. Study on driving datasets and African road scenes
- DLA Piper, Data Protection Laws of the World. Uganda
- ChimpReports, 16 October 2026. 423 commuter taxis fail dangerous mechanical condition tests
The proposal cites its full source list. Indicative figures come from scripts/model.py in the project repository.