Fresh concerns over impact of Uganda’s expanding digital surveillance

There are new concerns that journalists and other civil society actors in Uganda continue to suffer from the negative impact of the country’s expanding digital surveillance apparatus.

An in-depth report by The Independent highlights the problem, citing the case of a journalist Canary Mugume of NBS Television who has had his phones snatched twice in assault incidents he believes were targeted.

Apart from the stolen phones, Mugume says he has received a message in the past from Apple warming him of being the target of a spyware, possibly from the government to snoop on his personal or work-related information.

According to the outlet, Mugume’s experience of suspected surveillance is in line with the content of a report released in June by Unwanted Witness, a digital rights advocacy organization.

The 42-page report details how governments across seven East and Southern African countries are weaponizing surveillance technologies and spyware to suppress civil society, journalists, and human rights defenders.

Fears of such surveillance are even more worrisome as the country moves closer to general elections in 2026, the article warns.

Going by the report, smart city projects in countries like Uganda, Rwanda and Zimbabwe are often presented by governments as crime-fighting tools but, in realty, they function as mass surveillance systems that put the security and privacy of people’s personal data at risk.

Per The Independent, Uganda has seen as an expansion of its digital surveillance architecture in the last few years through aspects such as a facial recognition-based safe city project implemented by Chinese giant Huawei for which the government has spent huge sums of money, compulsory biometric SIM registration linked to the national ID which has also been cited as a surveillance enabler, digital number plates with real-time tracking capabilities, social media monitoring, and the use of dangerous spyware to infiltrate the phones or devices of targets.

The report lists some of the legal frameworks that enable surveillance in the country and also identifies the oversight gaps. Given the dangers of such surveillance, Unwanted Witness and other digital rights advocates are urging Uganda and the other country to take a number of remedial actions.

These, they say, should include legal reforms that set high human rights standards, stronger and independent oversight bodies, transparency from tech providers, awareness campaigns on the importance of digital rights as well as the strengthening of institutional accountability mechanisms.

African governments have in the past been advised to put in place robust data protection regulations if they have to keep deploying biometric surveillance and other smart city technologies.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  data protection  |  smart cities  |  surveillance  |  Uganda