Universal access in Uganda
25
by June 2004. The UCC has also secured funding from the World Bank to support
independent entrepreneurs to provide access to telephony and ICT in the 154
‘unprotected’ counties; that is, counties which the two national telecommunications
operators are under no obligation to serve and are open to competition (The Monitor,
2004).
Conclusion
I have attempted in this paper to paint a coherent picture of the thinking and
processes that have come to define the shape of the current communications policy
regime in Uganda as it applies to telecommunications and ICT. A whole range of
measures are presently being implemented toward the goal of universal access, and the
evaluation of the impact of these measures will be more meaningful if theoretically
informed. Also, I have provided in this paper a systematic conceptual accounting for the
rationale behind the telecommunications and ICT policies by underscoring universal
access as the foundation principle for communications policy in Uganda. As a case study,
Uganda stands out because it is the first country in Africa where the penetration of
mobile telephony overtook that of fixed lines. The historical background provided in this
paper should help to shed light on the dramatic changes that have taken place in the
telecommunications and ICT sectors, hence justifying the need to scrutinize more closely
the current trends and where they might lead in both practice and theory. As the policies
being implemented presently come to fruition, future research will have to engage with
questions regarding the effectiveness of the measures being applied and the potency of
the assumptions on which they were. This paper should have drawn attention to those
questions.
Convention