On January 13, 2026, two days before Ugandans were due to cast their ballots in the general election on January 15, the digital lights went out, once again, pushing the country into familiar and troubling territory.
It was a move with far-reaching implications, not only for the credibility of the election itself, but for trust in state institutions, economic stability, and Uganda’s democratic future.
Internet shutdowns are often framed by authorities as temporary security measures, designed to prevent the spread of misinformation or maintain public order. But in practice, they have become a direct political instrument, one that disproportionately harms citizens while doing little to address the deeper causes of electoral tension.
On the evening of January 13, 2026, at precisely 6 p.m., the Uganda Communications Commission issued a sweeping directive to all mobile network operators and internet service providers: suspend public internet access nationwide. The order came without warning and with familiar justifications.
Authorities cited concerns over “online misinformation,” the risk of “electoral fraud,” and the need to prevent “incitement of violence that could affect public confidence and national security during the election period.”
What followed was not a targeted intervention but a near-total blackout. Social media platforms disappeared. Web browsing and video streaming stopped. Personal email services and messaging applications went dark.
For most Ugandans, the internet ceased to function altogether. Only a narrow corridor of connectivity remained open, reserved for what the regulator described as critical services, including hospital systems, banking networks, tax platforms, utilities, and the Electoral Commission’s online portal.
Even then, access was tightly restricted. The shutdown extended beyond browsing and social media. SIM card sales were halted. Outbound data roaming to One Network Area countries was disabled, cutting off cross-border communication just as political tensions peaked.
Independent monitoring quickly confirmed the scale of the disruption. Network measurement tools, including Cloudflare Radar and Internet Outage Detection Analysis, recorded a sharp and immediate drop in internet traffic across Uganda.
Human Rights Watch cited the data as evidence of a deliberate, nationwide shutdown rather than technical failure. For many Ugandans, the move felt less like an emergency measure and more like déjà vu.
This was not the first time the internet had gone dark at election time. Similar shutdowns accompanied the 2016 and 2021 elections, each justified in the language of security and public order.
In 2021, a five-day blackout effectively silenced online communication during voting and tallying. It also ushered in a Facebook ban that remains in place years later, reshaping how Ugandans communicate, organise, and do business online. The economic consequences of those earlier shutdowns were severe.
Estimates put the losses in the billions of shillings, hitting hardest the small businesses and informal traders who depend on mobile money, online marketing, and digital communication to survive.
Food vendors lost customers. Freelancers missed payments. Ride-hailing drivers were cut off from work. For many, a political decision translated directly into lost income. The 2026 shutdown landed in a country even more digitally dependent than it was five years ago.
Mobile money underpins daily transactions. Social media has become central to political mobilisation, news distribution, and civic engagement. Cutting access in that environment did more than slow communication; it reshaped the election itself.
ECONOMIC COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Beyond politics, the economic consequences are immediate and measurable. Uganda’s economy is now deeply digital. Mobile money transactions, online banking, ride-hailing services, e-commerce, and small businesses that rely on social media all depend on stable connectivity.
Shutting down the internet days before an election means freezing thousands of livelihoods at a critical moment. Traders cannot receive payments. Freelancers miss deadlines. Startups lose customers.
For a country where many survive on daily earnings, even a short blackout can translate into real hardship. Past shutdowns have cost the economy millions of dollars. Repeating the same action sends a signal to investors that Uganda’s digital infrastructure, and by extension its business environment, remains vulnerable to political decisions.
Internet shutdowns do not affect everyone equally. Those with access to state media, physical networks, or institutional power retain their platforms. Those who rely on digital tools, youth, opposition actors, independent journalists, civil society groups are disproportionately silenced.
In a country where young people form the majority of the population and where political mobilisation increasingly happens online, a shutdown tilts the playing field. It weakens participation precisely among groups already skeptical of formal political processes.
This raises a fundamental question: can an election be genuinely competitive when one of the main arenas of modern political engagement is deliberately switched off? For John Walugembe, Executive Director of the Federation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, the shutdown struck at the heart of how Uganda’s economy now works.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, he said, thousands of businesses have shifted online, not as a luxury, but as a survival strategy.
“A lot of businesses in sectors such as transportation and finance found themselves constrained during this period,” Walugembe explained. “Many could not make or receive payments, while others, especially in logistics, were unable to reach clients due to location and connectivity challenges.”
The disruption went deeper than transactions. Many firms store records, customer data, and operational systems on cloud-based platforms. When the internet was cut, that information effectively disappeared.
“The impact has been huge,” Walugembe said. “It is yet to be fully quantified, but I would estimate that the losses could be three to four times higher than those recorded during Covid-19. If we lost about $6 million per day then, this time we may have lost close to $24 million per day.”
For digital platforms built entirely around connectivity, the shutdown was existential. Rapa Thomson Ricky, co-founder and director of Safe Boda, described a sudden reversion to chaos.
“We have been forced to operate manually,” he said. “You can imagine a community of 16,000 motorcycle riders having to operate without the digital platform. It is an unbelievable scale of operations.”
The numbers tell a stark story. Each rider earns at least Shs 50,000 a day, Rapa said. With at least 10,000 riders unable to work, the losses amounted to roughly Shs 500 million every day the internet was off. “I have been receiving complaints from various clients,” he added.
“Drivers used to rely on the apps to transport passengers and make deliveries, especially food orders. Now, getting customers and fulfilling orders has become very difficult.”
Beyond economics, the shutdown has opened a legal and constitutional fault line. Asiimwe Anthony, Vice President of the Uganda Law Society, said the Uganda Communications Commission acted without legal authority.
“The UCC Act empowers the Commission to suspend communication services upon declaration of a state of emergency as provided in the Constitution,” he said. “No state of emergency has been declared in Uganda. Therefore, the order by UCC is illegal, null and void, and unconstitutional.”
The Law Society warned that sectors reliant on connectivity, health, education, transport, logistics, and online commerce suffered damage with no mechanism for compensation. More fundamentally, Asiimwe said, the shutdown struck at citizens’ rights.
“Government’s act to shut down the internet towards the election date is a clear indicator of infringement of citizens’ right to access to information, especially in such a fragile time of human rights violations,” he said.
The Uganda Law Society has said it is prepared to pursue public interest litigation to hold the state accountable and seek redress for affected citizens. Taken together, these accounts reveal the broader cost of switching off a digital nation.
What was framed as a security measure rippled outward, disrupting businesses, eroding trust, and raising profound legal questions. In an economy and society now wired to the internet, the shutdown did more than silence political debate.
It temporarily shut down daily life itself, leaving behind losses that may linger long after the signal returned.
SECURITY VERSUS CONFIDENCE
Supporters of shutdowns argue that elections are high-risk moments and that extraordinary measures are justified. But security built on restriction is fragile.
Democracies are strengthened not by limiting information, but by managing it openly, through credible institutions, clear communication, and trust. If authorities believe an election cannot withstand open communication, the problem may not be the internet. It may be the process itself.
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