In an unprecedented move, the Uganda Communication Commission, the regulator of the telecommunication sector, ordered a countrywide shutdown of the Internet on the eve of the January 14 general election.
The order left companies that rely on Internet connectivity to do business counting losses.
The government is yet to announce when the shutdown will end, but companies are saying they are staring at spiraling negative effects following days of no operations.
“This puts our businesses in bad shape, and if the internet isn’t turned on soon, some businesses will be in a really bad situation,” says Rapa Thomson Ricky, the co-founder and director of taxi-hailing company Safe Boda.
According to Mr Ricky, Safe Boda grosses over a million mobile transactions with its network of 22,000 drivers in the Kampala Metropolitan Area, through which it earns a small fee.
“We are small companies, just waiting for when the Internet returns, and we can’t be sure when that will be. Even if we are making Ush50 off each transaction, the cumulative effect of this gets big over the number of days we are not running and our riders are not able to earn,” he said.
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