The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Uganda’s economy is now deeply digitized. Mobile money platforms alone process hundreds of billions of shillings daily, serving as the primary financial arteries for the informal sector, which employs over 70% of the population.
COMMENT | ALEX ATWEMEREIREHO | In the early hours of 13 January 2026, just 48 hours before Ugandans were due to cast ballots in the general elections, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) issued a directive to all licensed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mobile network operators to suspend public internet access nationwide. This comprehensive shutdown encompassing mobile broadband, fibre, fixed wireless, leased lines, satellite connections, and even outbound data roaming was justified by the regulator as a measure to “curb online misinformation, prevent electoral fraud and incitement to violence, and safeguard public order and national security.” In reality, this sweeping blackout plunged the country into a form of digital darkness with profound economic, social, legal, democratic and human costs that are only beginning to be tallied.
The 2026 shutdown did not occur in isolation. It forms part of a troubling pattern in Uganda’s recent political landscape: similar internet shutdowns were imposed during the 2016 and 2021 elections, including an almost five-day blackout in 2021 that, according to independent monitoring group NetBlocks, cost the Ugandan economy approximately US $9 million. This year’s disruption, however, took place at a far more consequential moment, when digital connectivity is no longer ancillary to life but integral to survival, governance and economic participation.
The internet in contemporary Uganda has become a public utility and civic infrastructure. It is the medium through which commerce flows, health systems coordinate, education is delivered, and political participation is exercised. Cutting it off during an election is not a neutral administrative decision; it is an intervention with deep constitutional, moral and developmental implications. As communications theorist Clay Shirky observed in Here Comes Everybody, “the power of organizing without organizations” lies in shared platforms of communication. When those platforms are withdrawn by the state, civic life is not merely inconvenienced; it is structurally impaired.
Economically, the blackout functioned as a silent tax imposed on millions of citizens without parliamentary debate or public consent. Uganda’s economy is now deeply digitized. Mobile money platforms alone process hundreds of billions of shillings daily, serving as the primary financial arteries for the informal sector, which employs over 70% of the population. Small and medium enterprises depend on internet access for payments, supply chains, customer engagement and marketing. Freelancers, consultants, researchers, writers, designers, those who missed on booking air tickets, and digital professionals among others who operate within strict international deadlines that cannot be renegotiated at the whim of a state directive.
During the shutdown, Safe Boda and other app-based transport services experienced abrupt declines in usage because drivers and clients were disconnected from dispatch platforms. Online traders lost access to suppliers and customers. Writers and researchers missed submission deadlines, jeopardizing contracts, grants and reputations built over years. Consultants and think tanks with scheduled Zoom briefings, regional policy dialogues and international meetings were abruptly silenced, appearing unreliable through no fault of their own. Digital advertisers lost peak-period revenue. Taxable transactions evaporated. None of these losses were compensated; none were acknowledged.
Yet the gravest cost of the blackout lies not in balance sheets but in human life and safety. Modern healthcare systems rely increasingly on digital connectivity. In Uganda, telemedicine use increased dramatically after COVID-19, enabling rural patients to access urban specialists, emergency consultations and referral coordination. The World Bank has previously documented a sharp rise in digital health reliance across East Africa. When the internet went dark, these lifelines were severed.
In emergency medicine, minutes matter. Stroke, cardiac arrest, obstetric complications and trauma cases require rapid coordination between clinics, ambulances and referral hospitals. Families routinely use mobile data to locate blood donors, consult doctors, or arrange emergency transport. An internet shutdown during this period did not merely inconvenience hospitals; it introduced lethal delays. While official statistics rarely capture “missed digital interventions,” public health experts are clear that disruptions to communication networks correlate with increased morbidity and preventable mortality. The silence imposed between Wednesday evening and Saturday night was not benign; it carried the weight of lives placed at risk in unseen ways.
Democratically, the blackout struck at the heart of electoral integrity. Elections demand transparency, real-time reporting, independent verification and open communication. The UCC directive blocked social media, web browsing, messaging platforms and email, suspended SIM card sales and restricted outbound data roaming precisely when citizens, journalists and observers needed connectivity most. Information asymmetry became the new normal. Rumor replaced verification. Silence replaced scrutiny.
Human Rights Watch condemned the shutdown as a violation of fundamental rights and warned that blanket internet restrictions during elections undermine democratic credibility. When polling agents cannot coordinate, when journalists cannot publish evidence, when citizens cannot share observations or seek clarification, the electoral process becomes opaque by design. Former presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi publicly rejected the results, arguing that an election conducted in an information blackout cannot meet basic standards of credibility. Whether one agrees with his conclusion or not, the conditions that produced such mistrust are undeniable.
Legally, the shutdown sits uneasily, indeed unlawfully within both domestic and international frameworks. Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights guarantees every individual the right to receive information and to express and disseminate opinions within the law. The Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa (2019) explicitly affirms that states shall not interfere with individuals’ access to the internet and that any restrictions must meet strict tests of legality, necessity and proportionality.
Uganda’s Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act, 2022 criminalizes specific harmful online conduct, including cyber harassment and the spread of malicious information. Nowhere does it authorize a blanket nationwide internet shutdown. International human rights law is unequivocal: collective punishment through indiscriminate restrictions fails the proportionality test. A state may target unlawful content or actors; it may not criminalize connectivity itself.
Philosophically, the shutdown revives an old but dangerous impulse: the belief that controlling information preserves order. German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, warned that democracy withers when spaces for public reasoning are colonized or suppressed. Elections are not merely about ballots; they are about discourse, contestation and collective judgment. Sever communication, and the democratic process is reduced to a ritual devoid of deliberative substance.
Similarly, Amartya Sen, in Development as Freedom, reminds us that access to information is not only instrumentally valuable but constitutive of freedom itself. To deny citizens information at a decisive political moment is to deny them agency. It is to treat them not as participants in sovereignty but as subjects to be managed.
The state’s justification that shutdowns prevent misinformation collapses under empirical and logical scrutiny. Misinformation thrives in vacuums. It is countered through transparency, credible official communication, independent media and digital literacy not through silence. The blackout did not eliminate falsehoods; it eliminated truth alongside them, leaving citizens to navigate uncertainty without tools.
In sum, the 2026 internet shutdown was not a technical glitch, nor a neutral security measure. It was a deliberate policy choice with foreseeable consequences: economic loss, democratic erosion, legal violation and human risk. Its cost will echo long after connectivity stabilizes, measured in lost livelihoods, damaged trust, endangered lives and a deepened sense of exclusion from the digital public sphere.
Ugandans did not demand darkness. They demanded participation, transparency and dignity. A state that fears its citizens’ connectivity reveals not strength but insecurity. Democracy does not flourish in silence, and development cannot advance in blackout. When the internet was switched off, it was not merely data that disappeared; it was confidence, credibility and the promise of an open society.
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The writer is a lawyer, researcher, and governance analyst.
alexatweme@gmail.com
