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Internet, ICT, Broadband and Consumer E-Commerce in Uganda and East Africa

Winston Churchill must have seen it coming 70 years ahead of his time and perhaps its one other reason that he labelled it; ‘The Pearl of Africa’. Uganda was one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to gain full Internet connectivity. Most operators like, Uganda Telecom, MTN Uganda, Warid Telecom, Zain, The Broadband Company, Infocom, Afsat and many others offer a range of data services including ISDN, ADSL Broadband internet and local and international leased lines. A new competition framework will liberalise VoIP Internet telephony completely, creating additional opportunities for them. The introduction of UTL’s Freenet service and a special Internet tariff countrywide have helped to increase Internet usage, as has the recent strong growth of the fixed-line networks and an explosion of the number of cybercafes.

According to the ‘Key Statistics and Fixed Line Telecoms Regulatory Overview’, all market segments are experiencing strong growth, while total teledensity is still low at less than 9%. Major initiatives have been launched to bring telecommunication services and the Internet to rural areas of the country, partly funded by the highly successful operators through a universal service fund. This in part, is due to the liberalisation of the Telecommunications industry by the Government.

’The Mobile Market Overview and Statistics Report’ found out that the introduction of cellular telephony has revolutionised Uganda’s telecommunications industry since the first network went live in 1995, with two more following in 1998 and 2001. As early as 1999 Uganda became the first country on the continent where the number of mobile subscribers passed the number of fixed-line users, and the ratio is now more than 18:1. The market is consistently growing at around 50% p.a., while market penetration is still low at less than 9%. The recent introduction of GPRS will enable the mobile operators to play a larger role in Internet service provision as more operators enter the market.

Enter the Fibre-optic Sea cables

They are the arteries of the modern world. Stretching tens of thousands of miles over the ocean beds, the vast web of intercontinental submarine cables have brought the possibility of cheap high-speed internet and clear long-distance telephone calls to all major parts of the globe.
Sadly, though, East Africa has for so long remained the only large, inhabited coastline cut off from the global fibre-optic network. Reliant entirely on expensive satellite connections, people on the world's poorest continent pay some of the highest rates for logging on or phoning. Local universities and many corporate entities are charged up to 50 times more for bandwidth than a typical Swedish college, making online research slow and frustratingly impossible.
"Imagine you had all the students at Oxford trying to access the web through a single UK household connection," said Josephine Nalwanga, a top ICT official in Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports. "That's what it's like for most students in Uganda and Africa."
However, with the last pieces of the global fibre-optic jigsaw now falling into place, all that is set to change. In October 2008, the first lengths of a new 9,300 fibre-optic undersea cable started making its way along the Eastern side of Africa’s coastline. 
On-ramp
The 23^rd-June-2009 saw the landing of the $422m Seacom cables on the East African coast at Mombassa. Owned mainly by African investors, the cable stretches northwards from South Africa, making landfalls at Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, and Kenya before splitting to tap into the international grid in France and India. The Seacom cable is closely being followed by two more finger-thin cables, including the ambitious Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), which will connect 21 countries on the eastern half of Africa to each other and to the world and TEAM, which is a sole Kenyan Government initiative.
Indeed, for all the talk of a wireless era, it is physical infrastructure rather than satellite technology that enables cheap and fast communication. Intercontinental fibre-optic cables, which use light signals to transmit data, carry more than 95% of the world's internet and telephone traffic. Many of the existing undersea networks were installed in the telecoms boom of the late 1990s but a second undersea cable-laying spurt is now under way, with $5.5bn-worth of new projects due for completion by 2010.
The increased use of video download sites and peer-to-peer social networking sites such as YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and many more, which is causing global bandwidth usage to more than double every 18 months. Another is the need for backup cables in case of accidents - earlier this year businesses in the Middle East and India were badly affected for several days when a ship's anchor sliced through two undersea cables off the Egyptian coast. However, East Africa has not been alone; there is demand from places never before connected to the fibre-optic grid. Even sparsely populated areas such as Greenland, which has only 56,000 inhabitants, are finding that satellite links are not so reliable. The self-governing Danish territory is laying a 3,000-mile cable that will link to the global network via Canada and Iceland.
However, it is in the eastern half of Africa where the cables are most keenly awaited. In Kenya a slow and often unreliable broadband internet, connection with the main telecoms operator costs $90 a month. In landlocked neighbouring countries like Uganda, the price can be twice as much depending on different operators.
The International Financial Corporation, which together with 25 regional telecoms companies, is funding the $300m EASSy undersea link, estimates that its cable alone will cause internet prices to fall by two-thirds in east Africa and the number of online subscribers to triple.
The cost of telephone calls made to other parts of the continent is also expected to drop once the new submarine and terrestrial links are in place. Many inter-African calls are now routed through Europe or the US.
The EASSy cable should go live in early 2010, ahead of the football World Cup that year. The host nation, South Africa, is linked to the single undersea cable that runs up the West African coast to Europe but the capacity is insufficient to handle the anticipated broadcast and internet traffic generated by the games.
Beyond the tournament, however, there are fears that there may be a large oversupply of bandwidth, especially as the Kenyan government has decided to build its own cable from Mombassa to the United Arab Emirates. Nevertheless, Josephine Nalwanga, who points out that consumers will benefit from lower prices even if this occurs, says the new networks will unleash an "African technological revolution", which will quickly drive up demand. However, she warns that, “we should not be over excited just yet because operators will not rush to drop prices because of so many technicalities like testing of networks and signal, the price fall should be expected in the second half of 2010.”
In addition, it is true that many countries are banking on IT to boost their economies. Rwanda is positioning itself as a regional telecoms hub, a "Singapore of the Great Lakes.” Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda all have a vibrant community of smart, young programmers whose skills led Google to open a regional development office in Nairobi. It also has a growing outsourcing industry.
Opportunities
1. Call Centres:
Despite the poor connectivity, local start-ups like, Kencall of Kenya, has already proved it can compete with Indian call centres for European clients and US. In two years, its staff has grown from 150 to 650. Nevertheless, Kencall's founder, Nicholas Nesbitt, believes his workforce could reach 5,000 within three years of fibre being installed. "For a country to be without fibre-optic links today is like being without a harbour in the past - you are landlocked," he said. In addition, there is another large scale ICT Faculty of Makerere University already in the offing that is going to accommodate up to 5000 workstations.
The effect of cheap, fast connectivity on business in the region would be "phenomenal.” However, the biggest potential gains will be realised in education and the business community, especially if schools and universities are given subsidised bandwidth. Instead of universities and students spending cash on building libraries and buying textbooks, they can access much of the same information free online. In addition, many Ugandan businesspersons are embracing the internet by purchasing items like cars and general merchandise online. Unfortunately, accessing Credit and Debit cards for most Ugandans and East Africans is still as hard as squeezing water out of a rock because their banks claim they do not trust their financial records.

2. Regional ICT centres

Even though broadband internet is finally here, it is only covering less than 5% of the Uganda for example, and that is mainly in urban areas that were found to have electricity, telephone lines, and sizeable numbers of potential internet users. Most of rural Ugandans have to make at least 10KM journeys to find the nearest cybercafé and download their emails. A few NGOs have come up to set up regional ICT centres in a few upcountry districts.

3. Computer and Telephony Hardware Assembly

It should be nerve racking for anyone wishing Africa the best to hear that East Africa has to import all her computer requirements from Flash disks to PCs. Since cheap internet and telephony connectivity are finally here, investors should be quick to start thinking of opening assembly plants for computer and telephony hardware at least one in each of the countries.

This however has to be done with consultations from the respective Governments, Top Hardware Brands like HP; Dell; Gateway; Lenovo; Sony; Toshiba; Acer; Nokia; Alcatel; ZTE; Erickson; Motorola; Samsung and many others, Service providers and consumers. Assembling hardware locally will not only make computers cell phones easily accessible and increase internet telephone usage, but it will also pave the way for technological advancement and manufacturing while creating more jobs and revenues. 

As we sign off, it should be noted that developments like broadband internet, industries, agro technology, and all the others would be key to stem several of the political, economical, and social evils that have dogged our precious continent for decades on end. If you have competent schools, financial and business institutions that create the best students to work the jobs created locally, then you will see a tremendous reduction of illegal African immigrants in Europe.

Seacom, EASSy, and TEAM projects are not just long cables in the sea, they are a step in the right direction to bridge the technological divide and provide that much needed light at the end of the African tunnel that will finally see us basking in political and economical independence.

Have you seen my dear Pearl of Africa - Uganda?

Uganda is one of the few countries in the world that anyone can easily own land or even lease it, and this simply because there is not much development especially in the country side. I believe this would present great opportunities for companies and individuals looking to invest in commercial agriculture.


I therefore believe that before we talk of industrializing Uganda and Africa, we should seriously consider investing in Agriculture because there so much unused and under utilized fertile land. Uganda is able to feed her fast growing population even when 97% of the farming is still substantial, not mechanized and relies solely on rain water. This therefore implies that if Uganda can improve her farming by mechanizing at least 20% of her farming, then she will be well on her way to becoming a food basket for the entire great lakes region, something she is already doing for South Sudan and Kenya even with her substantial food production.

Improving Lives by sharing knowledge and experiences

Hi everyone,

I am so delighted to join this platform.

I am looking for  ideas that can be applied to help improve people's lives for the better especially since I live in one of the poorest countries in the world, Uganda.


Uganda is blessed with fantastic weather, fertile soils, humble and hospitable people. There is so much the world needs to know about Uganda and there is so much the world can share with Uganda especially in terms of business and technology.