By Mulengera Reporters
This news website has established that the GoU risks losing very sensitive data and information as a very crippling internet shutdown looms. This has to do with the inability by the private company (Soliton Telmec), which for years has been managing and operating the National IT Backbone Infrastructure (NBI) which is like the road on which internet travels to where its required to power numerous government installations, to continue working without being paid by the same government which has defaulted for now 5 years (counting from 2020).
Actually all government MDAs within Kampala and Local Governments upcountry depend on NBI to have internet access and without that, there will be zero access to internet. From the government side, NBI is the mandate of NITA-Uganda which outsourced and contracted maintenance and sustenance of the same internet infrastructure to the private company in order to be able to concentrate on more core things.
So vital is the NBI that without it being up and running, vital government service provision-enabling capabilities like the egp (electronic gov’t procurement) and all URA-related transactions, especially those at the airport and land borders concerning customs and international trade, can’t be effected. Just imagine everything abruptly shutting down and URA not being able to engage in any customs-related clearance or collect any taxes! That catastrophe unfortunately is impending unless the government promptly pays up to prevent Soliton Telmec failing to carry on.
Yet that isn’t all. All transactions, government payments and transfers, which mandatorily have to go through IFMS or even Bank of Uganda, will be crippled and inoperational once the NBI gets disrupted and goes off. The visa systems will equally become crippled and once IFMS is down, government MDAs won’t be able to effect any payments. Some of the NBI-enabled internet processes are shared with neighboring countries like Rwanda and South Sudan and unplanned internet shutdown will inevitably create diplomatic glitches and complicate bilateral relations between Uganda and the two sister countries. IT-enabled security infrastructure of the country, including the Police CCTV system, will all be disabled and crippled once the impending shutdown of the NBI occurs.
Painful as it is, this seems to be the inescapable fate awaiting not just the GoU but also its private sector partners because not less than 21 leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs), including major telecom companies, are equally depended on the same NBI under some PPP arrangement.
HOW DI WE GET HERE?
Mulengera News has seen confidential correspondences which Soliton Telmec CEO Hamdi Ali Mohamed has been exchanging with several GoU officials including Executive Director NITA-Uganda Dr.Hatwib Mugasa, his supervisors at the ICT Ministry like Dr. Chris Baryomunsi and enablers at the Finance Ministry for close to five years now.
In the confidential letters, the clearly constrained Hamdi has been making it clear that since 2020 when the GoU last paid up to its NBI-related obligations, the operations have increasingly been becoming complicated to the extent that the company can now not pay UMEME (bill has now grown to Shs5bn) which supplies them with electricity to keep the NBI operations running. The company requires Shs1.5bn monthly to keep the NBI-related operations running. They also have to purchase spare parts to keep repairing the network (it’s their duty to promptly respond to all network-related disruptions in any part of the country).
The other huge operational cost relates to hundreds of generators which have to be kept running 24/7 to ensure all NBI-related services remain available and accessible 24/7 in all network territory areas scattered across the country. All these suppliers are demanding billions and have threatened to withdraw their services and supplies which automatically will cripple Soliton making the countrywide internet shut down inevitable.
The same will greatly shame Uganda and badly bruise Gen Museveni’s reputation as a President presiding over government which has become so broke to the extent of not being able to sustainably prioritize things that matter a lot to the running and portraying of Uganda as a modern 21st century country. The same will hurt investor confidence and diminish Uganda’s appeal as an attractive tourism destination besides hurting the realization of the country’s long term development objectives as enshrined in the NDP and the NRM Manifesto.
In the correspondences, including those copied to the President through the PPS, the Soliton CEO makes it clear that the total NBI-related debt or bill that is due and has been accumulating since 2020 (when the government last paid) has since grown to USD17m which translates to Shs60.3bn in Ugandan money.
This news website’s efforts to get a comment from concerned government officials (as to what the government intends to do should the internet shutdown happen or why they haven’t prioritized paying up since 2020) were futile as of this Friday evening as ICT Minister Chris Baryomunsi never picked his phone as did Finance Minister Matia Kasaija and PSST Ramathan Goobi. Kasaija initially asked for a few minutes to be called back and give some response but when we rung him again, he changed his voice saying he isn’t the one-making it clear it was a wrong number! (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [whatsapp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at [email protected]).
