Chevening alumni travelled from Kampala to Jinja aboard Uganda’s electric coach, visiting Kiira Motors, connecting with mentees, and enjoying a day of mentorship and networking.
Do you remember Uganda’s electric coach that completed a 13,000 km journey to Cape Town, South Africa, in November 2025? Last Saturday, we travelled in this king of the road from Kampala to Jinja for our Chevening alumni meet-and-greet.
The ride was smooth and quiet. In busy areas, a bell is activated to alert road users to its approach. The coach offers aircraft-style fold-down tray tables, spacious legroom, hand straps for standing passengers, overhead luggage cabins, and even a workstation where you can use laptops, read documents, or hold small meetings.
With Wi-Fi, public address system, microphones, and speakers on board, you could easily host a seminar on this bus. We actually did something similar, as you’ll see later.
But our highlight was a visit to Kiira Motors Corporation, where our colleague Emmanuel Mugunga, Board Chairperson of E-Bus Express, a subsidiary of the business, introduced us to the corporation’s CEO Paul Isaac Musasizi.
Mr Musasizi and his team guided us through the factory, explaining the bus building process, and helping us appreciate that there is much more happening inside the plant than many Ugandans realise. More buses are expected on our roads soon.
We rounded off the day at Jinja Sailing Club with games, aerobics, and conversations by the shores of Lake Victoria.
On the journey back to Kampala, we made full use of the public address system. We even had a DJ on board. Shamim Ibrahim collected our song requests on a sheet of paper and read them out over the mic. It felt like a live radio show on wheels.
Our mentees – the Gen Zs – were on board, and that made the trip even more enjoyable. Good music does not just travel; it also rarely respects generational boundaries.
Gen Zs, millennials, and the generations before them danced in their seats and pleasantly sang along to songs from different eras. There are actually kings of the mic in the association – something we didn’t know – and many of them led us in sing-alongs.
Music was interspersed with our UK experiences and answers to questions from mentees about the Chevening Scholarship.
By the time we reached Kampala, we had only played half the playlist. But, like memories, playlists never grow old – and we’ll continue where we stopped next time.
By Pascal Kwesiga
