After the confirmation of President Yoweri Museveni’s re-election on January 17, 2026, partial internet access was restored in Uganda.
This allowed general internet connectivity while access to social media and messaging platforms remained restricted. This comes after 5 days of the government-sanctioned internet blackout.
During this phased restoration of the internet, some Ugandans reported technical issues with other digital services such as mobile banking and digital document platforms.
Initial reports framed these disruptions as possible technical issues. However, it was later reported that mobile money services are also subject to restrictions under a directive from the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC).
The confusion surrounding these disruptions points to a broader problem. For many users, it was not immediately clear whether a service was down due to personal connectivity issues, localized technical faults, national restrictions, or deliberate regulatory action. This uncertainty highlights a gap in digital transparency.
Platforms like NetBlocks provide reports on connectivity trends by service during internet shutdowns. However, their actual monitoring dashboards are inaccessible to the public. This makes it a bit trickier for interested individuals to track live statuses of specific services.
Other tools like Cloudflare’s Radar and IODA offer more general internet traffic summaries and metrics, which are useful for quick visualizations and high-level reports but not for service-specific statuses.
OONI does not provide comprehensive data on popular digital platforms for countries like Uganda. Some of these tools are not particularly user-friendly to the average user.
For the average user attempting to understand the state of individual platforms like Facebook, this lack of clear status information complicates efforts to distinguish between localized technical issues and national connectivity disturbances.
Moreover, an internet shutdown highlights how brittle some digital ecosystems can be: while taking services offline can be instantaneous, restoring them does not always mean a seamless return to normal operations.
Dependencies and interconnected systems require careful checks to ensure proper functionality. For digital economies that rely on online banking and communication services, preparing for graceful recovery from outages can be as important as planning for resilience during them.
Ultimately, Uganda’s experience with internet restrictions points to a broader need for clearer communication, more transparent public-facing tools, and resilient infrastructure that helps users understand the state of the digital services they depend on.
