Uganda’s ICT WAIT– I Blame the Military!

ICT has been one of the most growing sectors in Africa. Uganda in particular has indeed made effort to deploy ICTs for service delivery. There is an effort to connect all MDAs to the a National Fiber Backbone in a bid to promote e-governance. The digitization of the National Register for electronic identity cards for citizens, the number of telephone subscribers has increased to approximately 20Million people and according to UCC, ICT sector contribution to GDP averages for the last 3 years at about 7% per annum. All this is happening despite the visible laziness towards the adoption and implementation of ICTs in service delivery. The Sector Ministry is one of the most underfunded and understaffed. If government expenditure is taken as an indicator of priority, ICT is one of those at the bottom of the priority list.

What could be the reason why ICT is not growing as fast as it should despite the obvious need for the adoption of these technologies in service delivery? Why does the Gov’t seem to be slow or hesitant in implementing ICTs for service delivery? I want to blame the Military, yes, the UPDF!

Looking at Many developed countries and tracing the birth and eventual advancement and utilization of ICT's for service delivery and the advanced Technologies like Encryption, Artificial Intelligence and sophisticated mission critical applications lands us in the Military departments in Europe and the USA. For the ICT scholars and practitioners, the US Department of Defense (DoD) [an equivalent of Uganda’s Ministry of Defense] will appear many times in the literature and this surely cannot be by mistake. The department was and still is at the forefront of research and innovation in ICT and other fields.

The Military is one those institutions that requires the highest levels of accuracy in execution of tasks, high levels of confidentiality, Efficiency, Effectiveness and Integrity among others. The demand for performance in the Military is very high and with very low tolerance for mistakes in most of its missions. This requires more than a highly trained human resource and therefore the need for technology and ICT in particular becomes eminent.  The USA, a global super power, having realized the need to impose itself as a ‘GOD Father’ of the whole world, has presence in many locations of the world and ICT supports this presence. It has to be deployed very effectively and hence the high levels of research and innovation which the rest of the world, has immensely benefitted from majorly through adoption of the standards and technology transfer.

A cyber-attack on a business entity even in the private sector of some of the developed nations, like Russia, China and the United states of America, is a matter of national Security. The Military gets involved and gets to the bottom of things using it's full resources because these types of attacks are considered attacks on the nation as a whole, and insult to their sovereignty. The attack has to be dealt with and studied and sometimes leads to a more sophisticated defense being built. This advances further technologies in digital information security. In 2014, USA held the government of North Korea responsible for attacking Sony Pictures Entertainment network in order to sabotage the release of the movie titled the ‘Interview’ which portrayed the President of North Korea as mostly a clown.

Compared to the majority of the civilian population, the military operates in harsh, stringent and life threatening conditions. This environment is normally good ground for high level innovation because of the need to protect the lives of the officers on duty executing missions both on land and in air protecting the lives and property of the others [The civilians]. These conditions require high levels of efficiency and effectiveness. The current/modern warfare is shifting, increasingly towards the cyberspace. Spying, attacking military installations and capabilities through the cyber space is on the rise and one cannot ignore the need to develop high end technology oriented defense systems. This requires investment in research and innovation. 

It is a fact that in many countries the Military / Defense finds it easy to access considerable budgets and funding for research and development. It is the case in Uganda and this advantage should be exploited to establish a technical wing of ICT in the Military that will then become a good spring board for sustainable high level innovation, adoption and implementation of ICTs and ultimately encouraging the rest of the country to accelerate the integration of ICTs into their business processes. The Uganda’s Ministry of Defense Budget hit the 1 trillion Mark in 2013. In the year 2015/2016, the Ministry of ICT has been allocated a budget of a mere 20Bn UGX. This advantage must be exploited for accelerated adoption of technology in our business processes.

The Nation has been involved in many security related missions internally and at regional level and technology could just make their work even much easier. The nation has also been struggling with citizens identification and voter registration, which technology has partly made possible and can make even much more exciting. Institutions like FBI, CIA, M15/6 SRS, the police and other security and intelligent services have systems that run on databases of citizens with details of their crime history, locations and families, making it much easier to dispense justice. This also benefits other ways of Life for example, the banks will find it less risky to lend money to a person who is known and can fully be accounted for by the state.

The Military in Uganda, MUST provide leadership in this cause to advance the integration of ICT's in business processes to improve provision of services to Ugandans better. They have the resources and the MOTIVATION!