Ministry of ICT and national guidance reaffirms its commitment to accelerate Uganda’s digital revolution

28 November 2024, 1:29 pm

By Ronald Ssemagonja

The permanent secretary in the ministry of ICT and national guidance, Aminah Zzawade has told the media in Kampala that the ministry is trying to make sure that ICT penetration and ssage is being done under UDAP. This was revealed during the NRM manifesto week presentation held by the office of the president, through the manifesto implementation unit which is mandated to track and monitor progress of the implementation of the commitments in the NRM Manifesto 2021-2026 in all ministries, departments, agencies and local governments.

The manifesto accountability week therefore is organized to appreciate these manifesto milestones attained, share challenges and strategies for better implementation for the remaining period of the political term. The permanent secretary says that high cost of end user devices and services, Inadequate ICT knowledge and skills and limited innovation capacity. Automation of government systems or processes is still slow. The existence of many stand-alone systems in government that don’t work in sync, inadequate complimentary utilities and services such as electricity and road access to support rollout of ICT Infrastructure, very dynamic nature of ICT ecosystem and difficulty in retaining ICT staff in the government, piracy of content produced by the youth especially musicians, video and audio artists, comedians, etc will all be handled accordingly.

According to the ministry, cyber crime has experienced a tremendous increase in level of sophistication mostly in money laundering, erosion of data piracy, acceleration of cyber-attacks, ransomware, and espionage and Low funding coupled with persistent budget cuts to the programme. In order to mitigate the above challenges, these are some of the measures being undertaken. The ministry has therefore taken an initiative to make sure that the Implementation, coordination, develop the digital transformation roadmap to strengthen the implementation of enabling policies and laws to accelerate Uganda’s digital revolution.

This provides an overarching implementation framework for a well-connected Uganda that delivers on the opportunities presented by various technologies. Costs of ICT services: Developed a paper on reducing the cost of ICT end user devices and services. This is expected to improve utilization of ICT services across the country. ICT penetration and Usage: Extend the National Broadband Infrastructure across the country- this being done under UDAP and more will be under