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NAIROBI/KAMPALA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Uganda ordered an internet shutdown on the eve of the presidential election, groundnut seller Susan Tafumba’s trade collapsed.
The 34-year-old sells groundnuts at Kampala’s Nakawa market, but much of her business now comes through a mobile phone app that customers use to order goods to be delivered to them by motorcycle taxis.
“Usually the app gets us more profit than those people who come on a daily basis to the market, but we lost customers,” said Tafumba, one of countless small traders whose increasingly tech-dependent livelihoods were hit by the shutdown.
This is contained in a report released by Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) in Kampala aimed at discovering how women in politics and in electioneering process had used and been perceived by online users.
The electoral commission directed politicians to use virtual campaigns to reach out to their voters in prevention of further spread of covid-19 through mass rallies.
However Juliet Nanfuka, a researcher and communication specialist in CIPESA, notes that according to their findings many female candidates had fewer accounts compared to their male counterparts and many couldn’t utilize them to speak to their voters.
Internet shutdown for Uganda election Citizens now wait for business to return to normal 21 January 2021 - 17:24 Nita Bhalla and Alice McCool Uganda s President Yoweri Museveni. Picture: REUTERS/ARND WIEGMANN
Nairobi/Kampala When Uganda ordered an internet shutdown on the eve of the presidential election, groundnut seller Susan Tafumba’s trade collapsed.
The 34-year-old sells groundnuts at Kampala’s Nakawa market, but much of her business now comes through a mobile phone app that customers use to order goods to be delivered to them by motorcycle taxis.
“Usually the app gets us more profit than those people who come daily to the market, but we lost customers,” said Tafumba, one of countless small traders whose livelihoods were hit by the shutdown.
Nairobi, January 14, 2021 ndash; Ugandan authorities should immediately cease all efforts to disrupt internet access in the country and allow the press to cover the country rsquo;s elections freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Yesterday, the Uganda Communications Commission, the country rsquo;s broadcasting and telecommunication regulator, ordered telecommunications providers to suspend internet services in the country until further notice, according to a sta