Uganda shuts down social media, ahead of presidential election

The Ugandan authorities have shut down social media ahead of the country’s presidential poll holding on Thursday, January 14, 2021.

The election in the East African nation will be contested between 76-year-old Museveni and 38-year-old Bobi Wine, a popstar who turned politician.

According to Reuters, the Ugandan authorities have ordered telecommunications companies to “immediately suspend any access and use” of social media and online messaging platforms.

Citing a letter from Executive Director of Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), Irene Sewankambo, Reuters listed the banned social media sites as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Signal and Viber.

“Uganda Communications Commission hereby directs you to immediately suspend any access and use, direct or otherwise, of all social media platforms and online messaging applications over your network until further notice,” the letter read.

But UCC spokesman, Ibrahim Bbosa, denied knowledge of a directive to switch down social media platforms.

The move is said to be in retaliation to the deletion of government officials’ accounts on Facebook.

Senior Press Secretary to Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, Don Wanyama, is among those whose Facebook and Instagram accounts were deleted.

In an email, Facebook’s head of communication for sub-Saharan Africa, Kezia Anim-Addo, had said a network of account linked to the government’s ministry of information and communications technology was deleted over coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

“This month, we removed a network of accounts and pages in Uganda that engaged in CIB (Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour) to target public debate ahead of the election,” he said.

He added, “They used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular that they were.

“Given the impending election in Uganda, we moved quickly to investigate and take down this network.”

Social media giants have continued to clamp down on politicians who use their virtual accounts to incite violence and cause tension during elections.

Facebook and Twitter have indefinitely suspended social media accounts of US President Donald Trump.