Portfolio company
Umeme |
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Company website | www.umeme.co.ug |
Business sector | Infrastructure |
Country of operation | Uganda |
Market | Africa |
Investment status | Current portfolio |
Investment type | Project finance |
Date of original investment | 2005 |
Office | London, United Kingdom |
Umeme is the principal electricity distribution business in Uganda, holding a 20-year concession to 2025. Umeme supplies over 300,000 customers, mainly located in the semi-urban strip from Entebbe through Kampala to Jinja. The network, managed previously by Ugandan Electricity & Distribution Company Limited, has its headquarters in Kampala and 32 district offices located in and around the city. Thirty thousand new customers have been connected since 2005 in a country with particularly poor access to electricity, and 20,000 new customers are now being connected annually.
The distribution network consists of 13,000km of high and low voltage overhead lines extending throughout the country, but concentrated on the semi-urban strip from Entebbe through Kampala to Jinja. Umeme operates and maintains the physical distribution system, which includes connections to customer premises. When the network was taken over, it suffered from a backlog of neglected maintenance, causing frequent faults and unplanned interruptions to supply.