It's been months since the last major social media interruption in Uganda. The outage took place around election time and was designed to help 'steer' the country away from unnecessary talk about election issues and outcomes. We have had many more since then but the response has been tempered probably after the strain of so much 'screaming'.
The few interactions that I had with the community of Internet business users pointed towards a deep sense of disappointment at a system that was failing to make the great leap into a future that other more 'aware' global citizens and countries had already embraced.
With shrinking space in the city it was obvious to many of us that there was an unlimited capacity and speed in cyber space and that if exploited could be used to drive our businesses into the future. Education, Commerce, Security would all be catapulted into the modern age.
So maybe this is where the connection now becomes clearer with the sudden change of routes for residents of Entebbe.
To those who have little or no business in the area the disruptions are just that disruptions but for those with important business travel and yes homes to return to, a visit by a head of state should be just that-a visit. The inability to do business and to stay connected to your life line is what members of the ICT community had to go through when mass outages took place for all users across the board. Maybe our argument is more with application of the law and certain aspects of its implementation. Perhaps our push should have been for a much more rigorous fire walling system that would be deployed to deny access to a select group of users (which would demand much more manpower and yes generate some more jobs for our youth). But even that would probably have been opposed at some level...and would have brought about bloating of an already over stretched economy.
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