Uganda’s journey to a computerised era

About one million Ugandans have access to computers, a number which is still lacking compared to the developed countries. For instance about 120 million people in the US, according to statistics from US Census Bureau have access to a computer.

Mr Asuman Jombwe, a private IT consultant, says although there has been tremendous development in IT professionalism, thanks to the increase in IT programmes offered at tertiary institutions, the two biggest problems affecting progress is the naivety in computer usage by the end-users and the poor infrastructure.

“Most of these people do not know how to use a computer, or the importance of IT. They think IT is only about being able to know the basics of a computer, and this has heavily affected the IT market because if there’s a big number of informed users, then there’s a big market, hence a high demand for IT,” he said.
He added; “IT infrastructure is only based in Kampala and some urban centres. In some towns it’s limited to Internet kiosks. If the government wants to increase the impact of IT on the people, it has to improve on the country infrastructure.”

In defence
But the Principal Information Scientist and Spokesperson in the Ministry of ICT, Mr Geoffrey Kiirya, defends the concentration of ICT in urban centres.

“Computers have to use power and although the government is trying to enforce rural electrification it has not fully reached most places so we cannot have computers there,” said Mr Kiirya. He says ICT development in Uganda is on the same footing like in any other country in the world but the difference is in the difficulty to access the new technologies.

“We are developing at a steadfast speed and any technological development happening in any part of the world can come here any time. It’s is only the cost of these new technologies that prevent us from acquiring them but we are conversant as a country on what development takes place.”

Such enthusiasm is not shared though with Mr Kigozi insisting that: “We are a bit backward. We need very well-trained people. The institutions of learning,

especially Makerere University, should do much more to help develop the field”.
But developments are happening. According to Mr Kiirya, the most important new technology in Uganda is the national backbone fibre cable being installed by Huawei, a Chinese company, to provide Uganda with quicker Internet access.
“This technology aims at easing accessibility to Internet and technological services. It will save the people from the satellite services which are slow and expensive,” he said.

The benefits could be immense. Mr Kiirya affirms that with improved Internet services, the government could roll out telemedicine practices in hospitals and also tertiary institons will be linked.
With what has been achieved so far, Uganda is on the right path to computerisation.