Country focus

A changing communications landscape

A number of important recent initiatives have undoubtedly advanced the roll-out of telecommunications to more people in Uganda. But it is not all good news – for end users or operators. Deblina Roy reports.

Can innovative communications initiatives bring the internet to Uganda’s rural areas?

AMONG RECENT TELECOMMUNICATIONS initiatives in Africa, one of the most innovative is Uganda’s Electricity and Fibre To The Village (E-/FTTV) project, a shared infrastructure concept that is bringing fibre to Ugandan villages, combining the roll-out of electricity distribution lines and fibre optic cable in rural Uganda.

ADVA Optical Networking SE, Corning, the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITAU) and the Uganda Communication Commission/Rural Communication Development Fund (UCC/RCDF) have teamed up to roll out a solution that, it is claimed, will save up to 40% of the deployment cost of civil works. The ICT side of the project, meanwhile, will expand the use of electricity by enabling the use of applications, such as e-government, e-health, e-learning and digital financial services.

But it is not just rural areas of Uganda that are seeing new services. Operator MTN has reportedly introduced fibre-to-the-home services in selected areas across Uganda.

In fact, MTN has already been offering fibre to select businesses across the city, but this approach expands the user base to include home clients that have previously been served by its home internet service – called MTN WakaNet – via a wireless connection.

Change is coming on the device side too: end users in the country will soon be seeing more locally made phones. In 2019, the government of Uganda and China’s ENGO Holdings Limited signed an MoU to start assembling and manufacturing phones and computers. The initiative is a collaboration linked to the Buy Uganda, Build Uganda (BUBU) policy; all phones and laptops will be tagged ‘Uganda.’

There’s even good news for the country’s attempts to build more data infrastructure. Raxio Data Centre has been officially recognised as the First Tier III Certified Data Centre in Uganda after receiving the Uptime Institute Tier III Certification. With this certification, Raxio Data Centre becomes one of fewer than 15 Tier III, privately-owned, carrier-neutral data centres in Africa and the second in East Africa.

And data demand is undoubtedly growing. According to the Data Reportal site, there were 10.67 million internet users in Uganda in January 2020. The number of internet users in Uganda increased by 357 thousand (+3.5%) between 2019 and 2020. Internet penetration in Uganda stood at 24% in January 2020. There were 2.50 million social media users in Uganda in January 2020. The number of social media users in Uganda increased by 27% between April 2019 and January 2020. Social media penetration in Uganda stood at 5.6% in January 2020.

Given this growth it is no surprise that attempts to expand access are continuing. The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is preparing a legal framework for the deployment and sharing of telecoms infrastructure. The regulator wants local operators to pool their efforts in order to speed up network expansion, reports Agence Ecofin.

However, the news is not all good. In May 2018, the government of Uganda proposed legislation that placed a 1% tax levy on the value of all mobile money transactions, including cash-in, transfer and cash-out. It was introduced in July of that year, but a public outcry saw the tax law amended in November 2018 to apply a 0.5% tax on the value of withdrawals only.

However, 2019 saw another unpopular intervention as millions of people in Uganda abandoned social media after punishing taxes were imposed on the use of networking sites and on money transactions using mobile phones.

Possibly most controversial of all has been Uganda’s blanket ban on all social media and messaging apps before the election in January 2021, a move backed by the communications regulator and widely seen as retaliation when Facebook suspended some Ugandan accounts on the grounds of what it saw as Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour (CIB) attempting to influence public debate.

It would be a pity if interventions like these were to undermine the positive developments of cheaper communications and greater connectivity. Service providers, end users and potential investors will no doubt be following developments in 2021 with interest. ✆