Navigating a restrictive access to information infrastructure in Uganda through the use of social media

Author: Kansiime Mukama Taremwa
LLM Candidate, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria

From late February into March 2024, a hashtag ran on X (formerly Twitter) under the designation #UgandaParliamentaryExhibition.  According to the protagonists behind this hashtag, the purpose of this move was to cast light on the outrageous spending within Uganda’s parliament.

The internet is considered to be the most disruptive piece of technology that enables the receipt and dissemination of information. Uganda is home to 2.6 million social media users. Few people can doubt the power of the internet in general and social media specifically, in stimulating democratic culture. Even some of the critics of digitisation accept that digital technologies lower the costs of access to information. The use of social media to organise and mobilise persons for action came to the fore in the early 2010s in what was known as the Arab Spring; a series of protests that led to the ousting of dictatorial governments in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. It was known for the youthful demonstrators that staged street protests and used social media to coordinate, raise awareness of the political issues, and record the events on the ground. The results of the Arab Spring are that dictatorships that had managed to stifle access to information and free flow of ideas for many years were toppled in part, due to the mobilisational capacities of social media.

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