By Mulengera Reporters
Speaking on behalf of fellow MPs representing persons with special needs (aka PWDs), MP Mpindi Bumali has commended the top leadership at UCC for complying with obligations imposed under Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) numbers 8 and 10 which respectively require governments to work towards reducing inequalities when it comes to accessing decent work and benefits deriving from economic growth.
At the Bugolobi-based UCC headquarters last week, Mpindi Bumali thanked Uganda’s Communications Commission for investing into persons with special needs-empowering initiatives in the preceding four years counting from 2021. One of the outcomes resulting from initiatives which the PWDs-sensitive UCC has funded is the national digital observatory for persons with special needs.
This is a mobile App which has been made universally available online to facilitate the profiling and registration of all PWDs in Uganda. This profiling is aimed at establishing who the PWDs are, the type of disability they suffer from, where they live, what they do, the unique skills they possess, their level of qualifications plus their respective physical address and phone numbers too. It also makes reference to digital literacy-related barriers each one of them faces.
The national digital observatory for PWDs was one of the deliverables and outcomes delivered at the conclusion of a three-year pilot project that was implemented by the National Union of Disability Persons of Uganda (NUDIPU) and private ICT consultancy firm Eight Tech Consults Ltd, with funding from UCC.
Commenced in 2021, the ICT for PWDs Initiative aimed at empowering and enabling persons with special needs to acquire the necessary digital literacy capabilities in order to deepen inclusion in accessing digital technology-enabled opportunities which the GoU has availed.
Under the National Development Plan (NDP 4), the GoU identifies and categorizes ICT as one of the key enablers of citizens’ participation in their country’s socio-economic transformation agenda but the PWDs couldn’t promptly benefit from this because of unique barriers preventing them from accessing, affording and generally being able to leverage digital technology.
In 2021, UCC and its two partners (NUDIPU & Eight Tech Consults Ltd) undertook a baseline survey to establish the extent to which such barriers were impending PWDs from leveraging ICTs to significantly participate in the socio-economic transformation agenda of their country.
It was established that these barriers indeed existed and were actually much more entrenched than had been thought. Equally true, it was quickly established that there was no reliable and comprehensive data on the magnitude of the PWDs’-related problems across the country.
That is how the process to establish the national digital observatory on PWDs was commenced upon and as of today, 73 districts from Uganda’s 7 disability regions have been covered; comprehensively capturing three forms of disability namely physical disability plus visual and hearing impairment.
According to Esther Kyokuzire, the NUDIPU Executive Director, 66,000 PWDs have as of today been fully profiled out of the original target of 80,000. These have been profiled in terms of who they are, where they stay, the type of disability they suffer from, their qualification and skilling levels plus the services they are capable of supplying once granted the opportunity.
The observatory, which is available online and can be accessed by anyone desiring to know and by PWDs whose details haven’t yet been captured in the database, is the first of its kind for Uganda.
It will enrich advocacy efforts by those wanting to speak out for the need to involve and integrate PWDs more in economic activities targeted at delivering the agenda for socio-economic transformation of Uganda.
Such advocates of PWDs inclusion rights have in the past endured the problem of easily being dismissed for hyperbole simply because there was no credible data regarding the profiling of persons with special needs who officially account for 12% of Uganda’s population as per the 2024 final census report.
From what different stakeholders submitted last week during the PWDs digital literacy conference at UCC headquarters in Bugolobi, Uganda currently has between 4.6m and 7m PWDs out of the 49m population.
These are people who have some form of disability. This is a significant number which the PWDs MPs thanked UCC for prioritizing through its Uganda Communications Universal Service Access Fund (UCUSAF) whose Director is James Beronda and was very around at the event.
It was explained that any PWD in any part of Uganda can now go online to leverage the national digital observatory App and have themselves electronically registered. This will enable their information and complete profile as persons with special needs to be readily available online.
Even CSOs, NGOs and development partners desiring to finance any PWDs-empowering interventions can access this same mobile App and get to understand the profiling of PWDs in Uganda. And gratefully, more profiling work is going to be done covering more districts since the same program is going to be carried forward for another three years under UCC’s UCUSAF program.
According to Phiona Namboga who is the Business Manager at Eight Tech Consult Ltd, the baseline survey that was conducted at the inception of the ICTs for PWDs Initiative way back in 2021, revealed existence of a huge digital gap regarding digital literacy and ICT capability levels among PWDs. It also revealed that many of the PWDs didn’t have smart phones leave alone button phones and this was largely because of their uniquely vulnerable economic situation.
The survey also revealed the relevant limitations when it comes to affording gadgets and that many of the PWDs don’t even know how to effectively use them. Absence of effective internet connectivity, especially in rural parts of Uganda, was another huge problem impeding the PWDS when it comes to digital literacy and usage.
All this information guided the UCC and its two project implementation partners (NUDIPU & Eight Tech Consults Ltd) to design what they considered to be the most appropriate interventions and initiatives to mitigate the situation. The designing of the specific curriculum guiding on the digital skilling of PWDs was one of the mitigation steps that were taken.
This localized curriculum is now freely available even online and gratefully, its content has since been translated into local languages like Luganda, Lusoga, Luo, Atesot and others besides the English version.
Esther Kyokuzire, the NUDIPU Executive Director, is grateful to UCC for facilitating the training of more than 10,000 PWDs who are now fully equipped with skills on how to use their smart phones, laptops and also how to open and sustainably to operate social media accounts. These beneficiaries of the training have been encouraged to train their fellow PWDs and impart on them similar capabilities.
Digital technology usage is something many of them were originally not adequately literate about. The training component also covered the establishment of websites for NUDIPU member organizations in 35 disability union districts of Uganda.
These websites are vital because the PWDs are now enabled to have sustained online visibility regarding their existence, activities and services their individual members are capable of offering.
Web administrators to manage and oversee the posting of content on such websites have also been trained and equipped with all the relevant skills, with financial support from UCC.
Trainers of trainers, who will be training others to replicate the digital literacy training program to cover more districts and more PWDs, have equally been trained in the 73 pilot districts out of Uganda’s 146 districts.
Yet that isn’t all. To ensure sustainability of the digital transformation-related capabilities the project has delivered, UCC/UCUSAF has established and will maintain in place two PWDs digital training hubs one in Kiboga and another in Bugweri district.
That adds onto another 4 digital training centers to which PWDs will be free to go whenever they feel like replenishing their digital literacy skills.
While thanking UCC for all this generosity, Namboga and NUDIPU’s Kyokuzire implored the GoU and it’s developing partners to provide more funding so that more such PWDs digital literacy training centers can be rolled out to cover more parts of Uganda.
The duo made it clear that at 12% of the whole population, the PWDs are too many to have all their digital literacy training needs adequately covered and catered for at the 6 training hubs which are currently in existence.
They also implored the government to expand the availability of NBI so as to improve internet connectivity so that those PWDs who become digital-literate are able to fully enjoy the convenience that comes with reliance on e-services.
“Otherwise with internet connectivity remaining a challenge, hindrances currently standing in the way for persons with special needs won’t go away,” clarified Namboga in one of the sideline interviews she had with media reporters at Bugolobi.
The duo’s plea was re-enforced by Dr. Hawa Tuku, a newly enrolled UCC Board member, who called on the government to increase funding to the Bugolobi-based Communications Commission so that more digital literacy training hubs can be established to perfect and replicate the inclusion initiatives which UCC is currently undertaking. That creating more training centers is the only way all these UCC efforts will have meaning for Ugandans in all parts of the country.
Dr. Tuku made reference to some of the hard-to-reach areas which are impeded not only by PWDs having to travel long distances to access training centers but also by internet connectivity constraints arising from absence of internet delivery infrastructure.
All said and done, the UCC Executive Director Nyombi Thembo, speaking during the opening ceremony, asserted that there is a lot that has been accomplished since 2021 and deserves to be celebrated including the PWDs national digital observatory which didn’t exist before and the data that was obtained through the baseline survey.
Other accomplishments relate to the PWDs-sensitive assistive technology tools that have been distributed to learning institutions to strengthen the imparting of digital skills to PWDs; the PWDs’ digital training curriculum that didn’t exist; the profiling of more than 66,000 PWDs; the development of the 35 PWDs unions websites in the districts upcountry; the enactment of the strategy for persons with special needs’ access to innovations’ development capabilities; the integration of the unstructured supplementary service data USSD code (*255*65#) for the national PWDs digital observatory for future phone users and the 10,000 PWDs who have been trained to acquire digital literacy capabilities.
Hon Mpindi Bumali, who jumped from a very important session at Parliament as legislators debated budget allocations, to come and represent fellow MPs representing PWDs, took note of all these accomplishments and commended ED Nyombi Thembo (who as of 2021 was overseeing UCUSAF at UCC) for leading so well.
He commended the leadership at UCC for deliberately complying with all the equal opportunity laws of Uganda that require inclusion of PWDs in all resources’ allocation decisions at all the government MDAs.
“I recall myself being mad at the team from UCC during a meeting of the Committee on ICT&NG in 2021. I was a member of that Committee, which supervises UCC. I felt that the PWDs issues hadn’t been adequately attended to. And in protest, I moved to block UCC’s budget for that non-compliance but Engineer Irene [Kaggwa Ssewankambo who was the UCC Ag ED at that time], calmed me down saying ‘Honorable there is something real big we are cooking to empower the PWDs more comprehensively and to have them included properly,” said Mpindi who is renowned for being a very outspoken advocate of PWDs inclusion.
“It seems that Eng Irene didn’t lie to me because what we are celebrating here today is proof that UCC has been very sensitive and inclusive of PWDs unique equity concerns. Otherwise, there is no way the President’s socio-economic transformation agenda can be achieved if the PWDs, who are 12% of the population, aren’t deliberately enabled to leverage ICTs which the government has designated as an enabler of that socio-economic transformation and the resultant development.”
Besides apologizing for coming late, Bumali also implored the leadership at UCC to intensify lobbying of the government of Uganda and its development partners in order to realize more resources that are required to establish more digital literacy training hubs so that more and more PWDs are capacitated and skilled on how to effectively use digital devices like laptops, smart and button phones.
UCC was also implored to become more deliberate about engaging the telecom companies on the need to lower prices for especially smart phone and other digital gadgets to enable more PWDs to afford them. It was asserted that majority of the PWDs live in rural areas of Uganda where majority of the population is economically vulnerable. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
