How Ugandans Overturned An Election Day Social Media Blackout

When Ugandans went to the polls Feb 18 in presidential and parliamentary elections, they participated in the most heavily-contested political battle since multiparty democracy began in 2005. But they also discovered that their access to social media and mobile payment services had been cut off, part of a three-day ban by the government that limited political discussion and temporarily halted financial transactions across the country. When the dust had cleared, incumbent, 30-year president Gen YK Museveni had been re-elected for another five-year term along with his National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, the leader of the largest opposition party was under arrest, and reports swirled of vote buying and excessive use of force by the police on opposition protesters. But it was the attempt to silence conversations taking place on Facebook, Twitter, and Whatsapp that produced the loudest reactions. In a country with the youngest population in the world, where 77 percent of the population is under 30 years of age, mobile apps have become vital to communication and commerce.

During the three-day ban, nearly 1.5 million citizens, or 15 percent of the Internet-using populace, downloaded Virtual Private Network (VPN) software to reroute their internet connections and return to social media, where discussion over the election continued to rage. To access social media, many Ugandans turned to Virtual Private Networks, which reroute one's Internet connection through computers in other countries, allowing dissidents to conceal their locations and others to watch services like Netflix outside the countries for which they're intended. "TrueVPN had a 220,000 increase in four hours, and that isn't the main VPN people used.”