Online Services in Uganda

“Uganda as a developing country has decided to go digital away from the old fashioned ways to modern systems and technologies. By 2012, the country plans to go digital and away from the analogue broadcasts of TV and Radio as a sign of development nation wide.

Meanwhile, the government has now digitalized some of its services such as National water and sewerage corporation services, The Uganda Revenue Authority services and more. These services are now accessible online. In the older ways, these services required visiting an office and passing through the extremely long quells that seemed to never end day in out. But now access to these services is now at your own leisure and in your own time since they are available 24 hours.

Although speed of internet connectivity in Uganda is still very poor in the public section, many internet cafes that provide internet in Uganda have a band width of 128kbs-256 kbs which is shared between 10-15 computers and this band width is just claimed and not the actual. Although however, for the private sectors, there are other options. Internet service providers are providing personal internet connecting devices to allow mobile internet access through the use of 36,36+ and 46 technology which offer faster internet usage but at a high cost that the modern man would prefer to use the same money to achieve something else and sees it as a wastage of money.

However, these services are up and running, Uganda still has the challenges of getting the public know about them. Many Uganda citizens don’t know about the digital sections/access of these services and still participate in the outdated system. This is mostly because they are un aware about the switch over from the old system to the new modern system

Another problem with the system is that although the new system exists, the majority of the population is uneducated or has a very low level of education. It’s already a challenge for them to use mobile phones, the use of computers, web applications such as browsers still minimal to most of the people especially in rural areas.

Lots of work is still to be done on the informing and educating of the population about the availability of these services online in order for them to be used more effectively. Finally, these online services now allow you to check your account status to know how you are doing, obtain forms such as paying the tin numbers, taxes, which are uniquely mapped and identified, allow access to the confirmation of payments, Also these services educate the user by informing them the rights and terms of condition which are classified in system denied and access.” – Robert Kikonyogo – Kampala, Uganda