I think the problem could be that they are promoting a World Wide Web (www).

When you take a look above you in now most of the urban areas of Uganda, there’s something strange in the air. Strings of digital cobwebs. I was taking a walk with a couple of friends from Nyamiyaga. These guys like everything organised. We notice something growing rapidly in our towns and un controlled.

A subtle attack. It is internet cables. Miles of them. Dangling from electric poles, looping over shop verandas, hanging like forgotten ropes. And they have attacked our roadsides with poles. Encroaching the roads and the reserves. Don’t you see them around you.

Perhaps even your house help is probably drying your laundry beside a fiber line meant to deliver 5G internet speeds. Let us briefly talk about this maze that is crisscrossing your neighbourhood to deliver Uganda’s digital revolution. Tangled. Dusty. On five to seven or so poles. And occasionally tripped over by pedestrians.

Does a sleek digital transformation have to look like this? Uganda’s digital transformation roadmap and the 10-fold growth strategy promise internet for all, digital inclusion, and gigabyte speeds that should be faster than Kampala gossip on these social media platforms.

That will be a topic for another day. The National Backbone Infrastructure (NBI), meant to connect government offices, schools, hospitals, and rural outposts, is described as the artery of a new digital economy. This is noble. Access to information and thus the internet is a human right. But it should come very well organized and regulated.

Uganda has made commendable strides. Internet penetration is up, mobile money transactions are thriving, and digital IDs have entered our landscape. We write these articles even in the comfort of our homes. Thanks to this internet penetration. The government even set a target: 90% 4G coverage and internet access for 80% of Ugandans by 2025.

But let’s get word on the street. Like my friend Mark says, let’s cut word on the tools promoting this strategy. It is a tale of two internets: one high-speed and invisible, the other slow and hanging above your head like an impatient bat. On the ground, it looks like someone dropped a bowl of connected long spaghetti and decided to call it infrastructure.

The National Backbone Infrastructure (NBI) was meant to provide a neat, underground, high-speed digital highway. In practice, the telecoms took the scenic route through the air, over fences, behind signposts, in the road, across people’s balconies. It’s a cobweb.

It is a maze. Like me from Nyamiyaga, I can’t tell which wire is for internet and which one is for electricity. All crisscrossing the other like a confusing wire gauze. Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) actually has regulations. You read that right. There are official guidelines for how cables should be laid, preferably underground or at least tidily above ground.

But enforcement seems to be operating on a “God is watching” basis. Each telecom provider operates its own rules. They put up cables everywhere minding only about their returns on every pole in sight; over your house, over high voltage cables, across transformer poles, above step up/step down generators etc. It is a bureaucratic mess.

Cables are laid without coordination. One telecom lays their fiber on Monday; the other overlays it on Tuesday. By Friday, you have four layers of spaghetti. Every provider operates like they’re the only one with a dream.

So, on this day we were lucky, my Nyamiyaga friends and I landed on some agents laying up their cables and we asked why they can’t put them in the ground. They responded they had a “right of way”, and had “clearance”, so they stretched us to things like “cost-benefit analysis.”

Ultimately, the “English” became too much for simple and ordinary guys from Nyamiyaga. As we were there, some doves perched on the cables above us and pooped on a colleague who likes all his t-shirts white. Leaving aside the humour, the risks are real. These tangled cables pose fire hazards, disrupt power lines, and become playgrounds for urban disasters.

And with cyber infrastructure now critical to national security, economic resilience, and healthcare delivery, one wonders, can we afford to let our future hang loosely in the wind? Urban authorities are already overwhelmed with potholes, garbage collection, poor housing, and boda traffic management.

They have neither the capacity nor incentive to police every errant cable. As Uganda, to realise our 10-fold growth ambitions, smart and clean towns, we must address the spaghetti junctions of our internet infrastructure. Not these cobwebs.

We need strong, enforcement and regulation where UCC and urban authorities must collaborate, penalise violators, and reward compliance. We need a centralised digital map of all cable installations. Incentivising underground installations. Innovation.

There should be mandatory infrastructure sharing. Telecoms need to use shared ducts, towers, and trenches. Not this freestyle wiring.

The author is a concerned citizen.