The Independent Uncensored News Views And Analysis

Warid buyer to pump Shs 350bn into network

Essar had earlier paid US$ 3 million in licence fees to receive Uganda’s sixth mobile licence Warid Uganda could have been sold by the end of the week if everything went according to plan. Essar Group, one of the largest Telecommunication industries in India is the intending buyer. The Dhabi Group, which owns Warid, announced it had agreed to enter into exclusive discussions in relation to an investment by Essar Group into the telecom...

Ugandans spend less on MTN callsas competition bites

MTN’s Average Revenue per User (ARPU) which describes how much money each subscriber spends on average on the network has declined, according to its latest figures. Following on a pattern set in the past, Ugandans have continued to spend less on phone calls as they make shorter and shorter calls and competition forces telephone companies to cut the cost of calls. On average, each MTN caller spent US$6 (Approx. Shs 11,000) on calls in ...

RwandAir plane in mishap at Kigali airport

John Mirenge, chairman of RwandAir was pacing up and down from the intensive care unit to the reception at King Faisal Hospital in Kigali. His phone was ringing off the hook. Calls were coming in from all corners of the world inquiring about the November 12 RwandAir accident at Kigali International Airport. The victims had been rushed to the hospital. Gerald Ssendaula, former Ugandan Finance minister was among the victims of the acciden...

Museveni misread the meter on the Ugandan economy

On October 9, 2009, Uganda celebrated her 47th Independence Anniversary. Most opposition politicians did not attend because national celebrations have turned into NRM functions, where the party functionaries dress in yellow colours and dry banana leaves to signify support for the nth term for President Museveni. In addition, the content of President Museveni’s message has not changed for several years and includes blaming the opposition...

We shall confront election theft

All elections in Uganda since independence have been marred by rigging and other malpractices perpetuated mostly by state agencies such as the Electoral Commission and security organs. However, for the first time, civil society has joined the fight against election malpractices and misinformation under their platform Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU). The Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights In...

Mengo or Museveni: Who talks for peasants on land

Margaret Namuyanja, 60, lives in a one-room house with her grandchildren along Salama Road in Makindye, a Kampala suburb. It is midday and she is hurriedly preparing food for her two grandchildren, who are about to come home from school. Namuyanja finds her life troubling trying to adjust from a spacious home in Ndeeba, a budding trading centre along Kibuye-Masaka Road, to a small house at Salama, where virtually everything is at arm’...

New breed of conmen in town

Your next caller could be a fraudster Sometime in August, operatives attached to the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) arrested one of Uganda’s biggest fraudsters ever.  The 21-year-old Michael Mugarura had for over three years been impersonating President Yoweri Museveni by imitating his voice. He would use a ‘caller ID withheld’ number to call government officials and parastatal heads and, in his ‘Museveni voice’,�...

Power, sex and scandal

Power, sex and scandal have been known to go together since man started living in organised communities, the first recorded incidents being in biblical times. Often, the mix has ended in tragedy but more often in blushes and a little embarrassment – depending on how high the personalities involved – and, then life goes on. Last week’s tragic death of the former UPDF army commander Maj. Gen. James Kazini in his girlfriend Lydia Draru�...

Dictatorship is good for lobbyists

Past their sell-by-date, African dictators are getting a chance at respectability and creature comforts, thanks to former government officials, and ex-diplomats, turned savvy PR mercenaries. African strongmen and their hatchet men have realised that they have a fighting chance of holding onto power, by simply spending billions on aid and other scarce state resources, to hire the services of the best lobbyists money can buy in influentia...