A waterway is a navigable body of water. This can include:
- Rivers: Natural flowing bodies of freshwater.
- Canals: Man-made channels for navigation or irrigation.
- Lakes: Large bodies of standing water.
- Oceans: Vast bodies of saltwater.
- Seas: Smaller bodies of saltwater, often connected to oceans.
In essence, a waterway is a route that can be traveled by boats or ships.
These are some of the various purposes of Waterways:
- Transportation of goods and people
- Irrigation for agriculture
- Recreation and tourism
- Hydroelectric power generation
- Supporting ecosystems and wildlife habitats
Like all functional rivers of the world, Uganda’s Rivers and Waterways issues need to be addressed like Urgently. The state of rivers niglect alarming. Uganda misses the opportunities and resource well maintained rivers bring to the communities. For example Tourism and trade, transportation, the aquatic ecosystem and many others.
Looking at river nile from Misr, one can hardly believe that it is the same river that you see in Uganda. The nile in Egypt is a well looked after water body probably because It is the main source of livehood for the people of Egypt, so it is paramount for the Egyptian to maintain that river hence how it looks.
Uganda needs to step up and invest in all waterways maintenance to be able to reap the benefits of rivers.