The government is aware of the economic benefits of universal ICT access

It’s ‘E-life’ for Uganda
New Ministry of ICT targets ‘e-living’, aiming to equip citizens with the ICT tools they need to carry out everyday tasks digitally

Uganda’s Ministry of ICT is one of its newest and most important. Its minister, Ham-Mukasa Mulira was handpicked by President Museveni for his wealth of experience in the ICT sector, or in the words of the President, “for technical reasons.” Before his appointment, Dr Mulira worked in IT for more than twenty years, developing software, teaching statistical computing and software engineering at university level, and being at the helm of Uganda Computer Services.
Now overseeing the fastest growing sector in the economy - telecoms - Minister Mulira says that although his initial background was in computers, with the advent of Internet over the last few years, telecommunications and computer technology have become irrevocably linked.

“Telecommunications are really to transmit the message from one geographical location to another. And IT is the processing, storage and dissemination of that information,” he observes. “So the convergence of the transmission of information across vast distances digitally and the processing of information has brought about this new sector of ICT.”

As the son of political activist EMK Mulira, who founded Uganda’s Progressive Party, and Rebecca Mulira, a pioneer in the country’s women’s liberation movement, Dr Mulira should be well up to the task of leading the ICT revolution in the country. Also, considering the developments in the telecom sector over the last twelve months, outlined in the UCC article on page five of this report, it is no accident that the creation of the Ministry of ICT has coincided with the liberalisation of the telecoms sector in the country - the second such stage following a preliminary liberalisation at the end of the nineties that saw UTL and MTN form a duopoly that ended in 2005.
Dr Mulira says that communications infrastructure is the foundation upon which IT development in the country sits. As such, Uganda has taken a giant leap forward in the past year towards putting this infrastructure in place, and also towards realising the Ministry of ICT’s ‘e-living’ dream and President Museveni’s vision of creating an information society.

“Simply ringing to say ‘Hello, how are you?’ doesn’t necessarily spur growth,” comments Dr Mulira. “With the liberalisation of the sector, operators have moved beyond the provision of just voice communication into the provision of data communication services. They are introducing services that will start building onto the next level.”

The other side of this coin is public. The government has expressed its intention to create a national communications backbone that will ensure universal access and Chinese financing has been secured to begin construction on the fibre link that will provide high speed and affordable connections for voice and data across the entire nation. Dr Mulira says the government is building ‘digital roads’, with open access for all who care to use them, including the country’s new telecoms.

“The private sector has laid fibre in some key places where they know there will be a return on investment. The government’s return on investment is in social terms not in balance sheets,” he points out.