The change to digital era, 1994-2019

A quarter of a century has gone by since the mid-1990s and this column seeks to reflect on this important period.
During this period, Uganda spent most of its time focused on politics.

It was a period that fully established the NRM era. 1994 was the year the NRM as a political organisation grew bigger than the traditional political parties on which it had depended on in 1986 for the formation of a broad-based government.
There were the Constituent Assembly elections in 1994 to debate and promulgate a new Constitution.
We had the first presidential and parliamentary elections of the NRM era in 1996, followed by further such elections in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016.

Traditional kingdoms abolished in 1967 were restored in 1992 and Uganda returned to its immediate post-independence hybrid of republic and constitutional monarchy.
Uganda’s foreign policy took on an increasingly regional tone after the RPF invasion of Rwanda in 1990, and its rise to power in Kigali in 1994, stretching to peacekeeping missions in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Liberia and Somalia.

In the eyes of foreign capitals, the mid-1990s and onward saw Uganda finally come out of the shadow of the Idi Amin years.
Privatisation of the economy that started in 1990 freed up much entrepreneurial energy into the economy, but also disrupted the civil service, mostly seen in the sale off of government pool houses.
Residential areas in the main towns increasingly turned into business quarters housing kindergartens, computer services offices, restaurants, hotels and NGO offices.

Although the private sector expanded greatly over the last 25 years, the business community, ironically, became more dependent on the State as a customer as well as on the State’s mercy. Services like healthcare and education that had previously been free or affordable became a commercial service, bringing a lot of pain to ordinary citizens.
The full impact of the Aids pandemic that had begun in the early 1980s made itself felt during the 1990s decade, leaving a hunting scar and shadow over Ugandan society.

Mass communications via radio and television grew impressively, with a private radio station in almost every district, but by 2019, many of these media properties could not operate without the benevolence or threat of the State.
The 1995 Constitution that was intended primarily to put a limit on presidential powers had, by 2019, effectively ceased to function as the political guidebook and Uganda seemed to be run more like a political monarchy than a republic.

Over the last 25 years since 1994, the world has undergone one of the most transformative periods in history. This was the digital technological revolution.
We started in 1995, gradually moving from the era of fixed-line or landline telephones to mobile phones when Celtel entered the Ugandan market, and this expanded to the rest of society with the entry in 1998, of the South African giant MTN.
The Internet also arrived in Uganda in 1995 by way of Infocom.

It took three years for email and the mobile phone to move from niche and elite services to becoming mass market services.
It is very difficult for anyone born after 1986 to appreciate just how transformative this technology was.
During the 20-year period from 1973 to 1993, scarcity had become the most common feature of national economic life: A scarcity of newspapers, books, magazines, music and information.

Public and school libraries across the country slowly started to go stagnant or die out.
The Internet opened Uganda up to the world and reduced its landlocked status.

And yet, the Ugandan media and academia have never given much real thought and coverage to this digital revolution.
Looking back over the last 25 years, ultimately it is not general elections or by-elections like the recent ones in Hoima and Kaabong, or the Constitution or the Cabinet that have improved the lives of ordinary Ugandans.

Rather, it has been the digital revolution that started in the United States.
Today, millions of Ugandans trade, exchange money, information and build and maintain relationships on the back of the privately-owned phone and social media networks.
Technology has improved the way the government functions, but ultimately it has created ways to bypass government altogether.

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