Two days before Ugandans went to the polls on January 15, 2026, the country slipped into digital darkness once again.
At 6 p.m. on January 13, the Uganda Communications Commission ordered mobile network operators and internet service providers to suspend public internet access nationwide. The justification was familiar: preventing misinformation, electoral fraud, and incitement to violence.
The consequences, however, were far more profound – and deeply troubling. This was not a targeted intervention. Social media platforms vanished. Messaging apps, email services, web browsing, and video streaming were cut off.
SIM card sales were halted. Cross-border data roaming was disabled. Only a narrow band of “essential services” remained online. Independent network monitors quickly confirmed a sharp drop in internet traffic, signalling a deliberate, nationwide shutdown.
For many Ugandans, the move felt less like crisis management and more like ritual. Similar shutdowns accompanied the 2016 and 2021 elections, including a five- day blackout in 2021 that ushered in a Facebook ban still in force today.
Each time, the stated aim was security. Each time, the result was diminished transparency and eroded trust. Elections depend on visibility. In the final days before voting, the internet is how journalists report, observers coordinate, candidates reach voters, and citizens share real- time information about delays or irregularities.
Cutting that access creates an information vacuum, one that often fuels rumours and fear rather than suppressing them. Ironically, shutdowns meant to curb misinformation can end up amplifying it.
The economic cost is just as stark. Uganda’s economy is now deeply digital. Mobile money, ride-hailing, online trade, and freelance work depend on stable connectivity. Previous shutdowns cost billions of shillings, hitting small businesses and informal workers hardest. Repeating the practice sends a chilling signal to investors and entrepreneurs alike.
Most damaging of all is the long-term effect on public faith. Repeated blackouts suggest a state that does not trust its own electoral process to withstand scrutiny. Democracies are not strengthened by silence. They are strengthened by openness. When the internet goes dark, democracy does not pause—it dims.
It wants to look like the African bush fighters are very shy to exposure. Indeed one cannot blame them for the brutal wars they ever get involved in. Imagine the bush guerillas during that horrible civil war of 1980/86, changing their rug tag clothes to put on military attires and to go in the villages of Luweero to kill the parents and then the next day come back in rugs to sympathise with the mourning orphans. Such nasty men afterwards did take these miserable children into warfare to train them to fight and kill people! How could the current digital communication of open air journalism be allowed to exist during such historical atrocities for the sake of misinformation or propaganda, incitement to violence and civilized African politics?
One hopes that most of the citizens of this country who have tasted modern digital communication agree that if the Internet of this country was not intermittently stopped in present day Uganda, many journalists who support the truth of communication would by now be in prison or dead. Lucky enough, presently they are alive and communicating while those who are responsible (the politicians and thier military) for the current atrocities, are being rounded up to taste the fruits of a 4th constitution of no term limits, no age limits they contendedly formulated for this country. One remembers very well the nasty regime of Idi Amin that was exposed nationally and internationally about its brutal killing fields. The Uganda journalists had to flee for dear life and those who stayed or the suave American journalists who arrived for a good story for their international papers got killed and their bodies dumped in the ravines of the countryside of the Ankole Kingdom!