Twenty pupils and one adult have died in a Uganda school bus crash after the vehicle carrying them home from a study tour overturned in Kapchorwa District, eastern Uganda, on Friday evening.
The bus belonged to King David Junior School in Ndejje, on the outskirts of Kampala. It was returning from Sipi Falls, a popular waterfall attraction in Kapchorwa, when the tragedy struck at around 8pm local time.
Police say the vehicle, registration number UA 108BQ, developed a mechanical fault while descending Chekwatit Hill in Kimawa Parish, Kawowo Sub-county. The driver lost control, the bus veered off the road, struck a large stone, and overturned, in a Uganda school bus crash that investigators are still piecing together.
Uganda Police Force spokesperson for the Directorate of Traffic and Road Safety, SP Michael Kananura, confirmed the crash in a statement shared on social media on Friday. He said emergency responders rushed to the scene to establish the scale of the casualties as the Uganda school bus crash unfolded.
Among the dead is Tadeo Ssekade, the founder and director of King David Junior School, who had accompanied the pupils on the trip. Minister of Local Government Balaam Ateenyi Barugahara, who visited the scene, announced the deaths on X, describing the loss of the pupils and their school founder as devastating for the Ndejje community.
Several other pupils and crew members sustained injuries and were rushed to Kaseremu Health Centre IV and Kapchorwa General Hospital for treatment. Eyewitness videos circulating online showed a badly mangled bus lying on its side, with residents and rescuers working to pull survivors from the wreckage.
Casualty figures shifted through Friday night as the Uganda school bus crash dominated national attention, with some local reports placing the toll as high as 23. The Kapchorwa Resident District Commissioner’s office later gave a revised figure of 19 confirmed dead, cautioning that the earlier numbers included people who had been unconscious rather than deceased. Authorities said investigations into the exact toll and the cause of the mechanical fault were continuing.
The crash adds to a troubling run of school transport accidents recorded in Uganda in recent months. Days earlier, a bus belonging to Amuria High School, ferrying students of St Paul Secondary School Katakwi on a geography study tour to Kasenyi Landing Site in Entebbe, collided with a stationary truck, killing the driver.
Uganda has one of the poorest road safety records in East Africa. Official figures for 2024 recorded 4,434 fatal collisions and 5,144 deaths nationwide, with speeding, poorly maintained vehicles and dangerous roads cited by traffic authorities as leading causes. Last year, two buses collided on the Kampala-Gulu Highway, killing 46 people in one of the deadliest crashes the country has recorded.
Parents of pupils at King David Junior School were asked to check on their children at the two health centres treating survivors of the Uganda school bus crash. The school has yet to issue a public statement on plans for the burial of the founder and pupils, or on counselling support for surviving students.
Road safety campaigners in Uganda have long called for stricter enforcement of vehicle inspection rules for school transport, particularly for buses used on hilly terrain such as the Kapchorwa route. Friday’s crash is likely to renew pressure on the transport ministry to tighten regulation of school trip operators ahead of the next academic term.
News of the Uganda school bus crash spread quickly on social media, with parents, former pupils and local leaders sharing tributes to the founder and the young lives lost. Condolence messages continued to pour in from across the country into Saturday morning, as families awaited formal identification of the victims.
The National Curriculum Development Centre and district education officials in Kapchorwa have not yet commented publicly on the Uganda school bus crash, though local leaders say support teams are being organised to assist the affected school community in the coming days.
