Over the past fifteen years, Uganda has shown a remarkable recovery from economical, social and political turmoil. But in spite of this recovery, Uganda is still a poor country and the penetration of ICT and level of Internet use is low. However, Uganda has a remarkable record of ICT for development initiatives and eGovernance programmes. These activities enjoy high-level support as reflected by the efforts of the National Planning Authority, mandated to coordinate the national development planning, to integrate ICTs firmly into the national development planning efforts including the Poverty Eradication Action Plan.
Most eGovernance programmes have been implemented at the central government level in Uganda. For instance the web page of the State House represents a portal to the Government of Uganda[1]. Although the range of public services offered on the website is limited, and only some individual government Web sites are accessible via the central government portal, it nevertheless offers some interactive elements by providing citizens the opportunity to interact with the office of the President via an ‘Ask the President’ email service.
Major eGovernment initiatives include the multimillion-dollar integrated financial management system (IFMS)[2] initiated 2005 by the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Development. It was implemented at six government ministries and four local government bodies and aims to support the improvement of public sector budgeting, financial management and accounting with a focus on improving poverty-reducing spending. Furthermore, it allows disparate departments and systems to share information seamlessly.
Another central major eGovernment project was launched 2004 by the Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry (MTTI)[3]. The project called Information Flow Management and Networking (IFMN) targets the improvement of internal communication across the various departments of the MTTI and its affiliated organizations. The aim is to ease management and to monitor and coordinate activities, as well as to provide information of the ministry to stakeholders.
A pilot project in the area of electronic voting[4] was tried to set up in 2000. The project aimed at establishing a database to be used as the basis for voter identification at polling stations for the upcoming elections. But due to management problems and raised concerns about manipulation of voter registration, the system was never rolled out and is considered as a failure.
In the area of ICT for development various projects and initiatives were implemented in Uganda[5]. Most of these projects deal with the integration of ICTs into the medical and education sector such as the Health Management Information System[6] launched by the Ministry of Health in 2002. It has established a management information database that supports healthcare managers in their decision-making processes especially through higher quality of data collection and effective use of information from rural and remote areas. In agricultural sector projects such as the Farmers Information and Communication Management (FICOM)[7] implemented in 2006 use ICTs to empower farmer groups with marketing and trade information on prices and quality standards available as a SMS service.
Furthermore, also civil society movements such as I-Network[8] are dedicated to the area of ICT for development in Uganda. I-Network is a national network of individuals and organizations that acts as a platform for sharing knowledge and information on applying ICTs for equitable national development as well as influencing and supporting ICT policy development and implementation in Uganda. The aim is to help ground level initiatives imagine the possibilities of ICT to overcome development obstacles encouraging ICT use for rural development to reach out to the disadvantaged and yet needy groups.
Uganda is a strongly decentralized country as a result of the decentralization reforms in the 90s. Consequently, most governmental services (e.g. business licenses, tax forms and information) are already available to the citizens at sub-county level. This background has lead to lower priority for implementing e-services compared to internal eGovernment initiatives which have received more attention. However, the establishment of the District Information portals[9] represents a good example for first steps in the context of local eGovernance. The portal provides comprehensive information about public institutions, infrastructure and opportunities in each particular district. The portal also includes participative elements as a feedback channel is provided and opinion polls and discussion forums to current issues are integrated into the portal. However, it is not clear, how the government intends to publish the results of this consultative process and assess the performance of the district portals.
Another initiative in Uganda that aims at strengthening local governance by utilizing ICTs has been the launch of DistrictNet[10] in 2002. The programme, DistrictNet, tries to provide transparency at the local government level and to improve the provision of public information through the implementation of advanced communication links between districts and lower local governments. It aims at improving the coordination and knowledge sharing between headquarters and sub-counties. DistrictNet has been considered as successful and provides a showcase of what e-governance in rural areas can look like.
In order to achieve high impact eGovernance and to reach out to masses often lacking access to public services, the future potential in Uganda, as in many parts of Africa, lies in mobile telephony as an innivative eGovernance delivery channel. The reach of mobile telephony has increased dramatically in recent years and has penetrated deep into the rural areas. Currently, the ratio of mobile subscribers to the number of fixed-line users is more than 16:1 and the market is consistently growing at around 50% p.a. in Uganda[11]. Programmes such as the District Information Portal could benefit from a closer integration of mobile telephony and in particular SMS-based services with the ICT-enabled solutions. All the mobile phone companies in Uganda already offer some sort of value-added SMS services such as job vacancy notifications, weather updates and currency exchange rates. To extend these services towards specific designed services targeting the poor and rural citizens, in order to achieve real development impact could be the next step on the agenda and projects such as Farmers Information and Communication Management (FICOM)7 represent existing and successful pioneers.
Promoting Freedom of Information Advocacy in the African Continent.
Responsible for Project : Africa Freedom of Information Center /Africa FOI Trust AFIC.
Duration Of Project : 2008-2009 Country : Botswana Status : En cours Listed In :
eGovernance et Genre
As democracy takes root in a majority of African countries, the campaign for transparency and public accountability
DistrictNet’s general goal was to improve the transparency of local government and to support decentralisation through the implementation of ICT, thus meeting the Ugandan government’s broader goal of decentralising its operations. The programme emphasises the domains of eadministration and e-services; e-society is not within its scope.
DistrictNet aims to achieve five overall goals:
1. increased availability of management information;
2. increased coordination between headquarters and sub-counties;
3. reduced costs of coordination between headquarters and sub-counties;
4. improved IT skills among users; and,
5. increased availability of public information.
