By Sempala Allan Kigozi

Tax systems were prioritized. Administrative systems were prioritized. Certain categories of communication were prioritized.

Democracy was not.

On the evening of 13 January 2026, just hours before Ugandans went to the polls, the country’s internet began to disappear. By election day, a nationwide shutdown had taken hold. The blackout lasted approximately four days, while restrictions on major communication platforms continued for days beyond polling day. Millions of Ugandans found themselves disconnected at precisely the moment they most needed access to information, communication, and participation.

Among those affected was a journalist attempting to file reports from a polling station but unable to transmit photographs or verify developments with editors in Kampala. Election observers struggled to relay incident reports in real time. Citizens attempting to verify rumors or access official information encountered digital silence instead. Political actors, particularly those dependent on online mobilization rather than traditional structures, suddenly found themselves speaking into a vacuum.

Yet throughout this period one justification hovered over the restrictions: the need to protect essential services.

Few concepts in modern governance carry as much moral and political authority as those two words. Hospitals are essential. Electricity is essential. Water systems are essential. Emergency communications are essential. During crises, governments are expected to preserve the infrastructure that keeps societies functioning.

The difficult question raised by Uganda’s 2026 elections is not what government chose to protect. It is what government appeared willing to leave behind.

Some administrative and economic systems were prioritized for preservation. But mobile money, digital payments and online banking still suffered significant disruption alongside the broader internet shutdown. Banking applications and payment platforms became inaccessible for many users, mobile money agents reported collapsed withdrawal services, and businesses dependent on digital transactions were forced to suspend operations or revert to cash payments where possible.

The economic consequences were immediate and substantial. Industry estimates suggested that approximately UGX 357 billion in digital transactions stalled each day of the shutdown, amounting to more than UGX 1.4 trillion in disrupted payment flows over the four-day period.

Even tax administration systems were not spared.

Days before the election, the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) issued a public advisory urging taxpayers to submit returns and make payments earlier than the statutory deadlines in anticipation of election-related disruptions. Once connectivity restrictions took effect, access to online tax platforms slowed significantly, traders were unable to generate electronic fiscal receipts through IFRIS as required by law, and compliance activities were disrupted. Revenue authorities themselves later acknowledged that election-related interruptions contributed to reduced collections and administrative slowdowns during the period.

If financial infrastructure, government administration and selected communications channels were considered sufficiently important to preserve during a national election, why was democratic participation treated differently? More fundamentally, what does a society reveal about itself when it protects administration more carefully than accountability and commerce more carefully than conversation?

This is not merely an argument about internet shutdowns. It is an argument about how modern states understand democracy itself.

For generations, democratic societies have treated elections as events requiring extraordinary protection. Courts operate special electoral procedures. Security agencies protect polling stations and tally centers. Broadcasters are subjected to public interest obligations designed to guarantee fairness and access. Entire institutional ecosystems are mobilized to preserve public confidence in electoral outcomes.

In practical terms, societies already treat democracy as an essential public service.

What remains unresolved is whether our digital governance frameworks have evolved quickly enough to recognize that reality.

The architecture of democracy has changed more dramatically in the last decade than perhaps at any point since the introduction of mass broadcasting. Elections are no longer confined to polling stations, campaign rallies, newspapers and radio broadcasts. They unfold simultaneously in physical and digital spaces.

Voter education increasingly happens online. Political debates unfold on digital platforms. Journalists use social media to verify and distribute information. Election observers coordinate deployments through encrypted messaging applications. Citizens document irregularities using smartphones and share evidence instantly across the country. Political mobilization, fundraising and grassroots organization increasingly depend on digital infrastructure.

The public sphere itself has become digital.

This is why the distinction between communication infrastructure and democratic infrastructure is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Disconnecting citizens from access to digital spaces violates fundamental human rights.

It is difficult to imagine authorities physically closing roads leading to polling stations while insisting that electoral participation remains unaffected. It is equally difficult to imagine regulators ordering newspapers off the streets or television stations off the air while maintaining that democracy continues uninterrupted. Yet the digital equivalents of these actions are often presented as technical interventions rather than constitutional ones.

The language of essential services sits at the center of this contradiction.

Historically, the concept emerged from a simple principle: some systems are so important that society cannot function without them. Electricity powers hospitals. Telecommunications enable emergency response. Financial infrastructure sustains commerce and livelihoods. These services are protected because their collapse threatens public welfare.

But democratic systems rely upon infrastructure too.

Parliament is infrastructure. Courts are infrastructure. Independent media is infrastructure. Electoral commissions are infrastructure. In the twenty-first century, digital communications networks have become part of that democratic architecture.

This may be the most important lesson emerging from contemporary debates on internet governance: democracy is no longer merely a constitutional value or political aspiration. It has become operational infrastructure.

Without functioning democratic infrastructure, elections may still occur, but democratic legitimacy becomes significantly harder to sustain.

The findings emerging from Uganda’s 2026 election period illustrate this challenge clearly. The shutdown affected mobile broadband, fixed internet services, satellite connectivity, social media platforms, email systems and messaging applications across the country. Independent journalism was disrupted during a decisive electoral moment. Election observation efforts were impaired. Civil society organizations struggled to coordinate responses and documentation efforts.

Businesses experienced interruptions in digital commerce, remittances and digital payments, while ordinary citizens lost access to the channels through which they discuss, scrutinize and understand political events unfolding around them.

Importantly, none of this means governments lack legitimate security concerns during elections.

They do.

Modern elections face genuine threats from misinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, coordinated violence, foreign interference and incitement. Regulators have a responsibility to anticipate and respond to these risks. No serious observer disputes that obligation.

The question is not whether governments should protect elections.

The question is whether broad restrictions on communication satisfy the tests of legality, necessity, proportionality and effectiveness expected within constitutional democracies.

That is ultimately a governance question rather than a technological one.

Democratic systems have long accepted that exceptional circumstances may occasionally justify exceptional restrictions. What democracies traditionally resist, however, is the normalization of exceptional measures. Once emergency powers become routine, they slowly reshape institutional expectations and public tolerance.

The danger of repeatedly invoking essential services to justify limiting participation is that the definition of what counts as essential gradually narrows until only administrative order remains.

Order without participation may produce stability.

It does not necessarily produce legitimacy.

Legitimacy emerges from participation because participation creates ownership of outcomes, confidence in institutions and trust in processes. Democracies survive disagreement not because everyone accepts the same political outcome, but because citizens believe they had a meaningful opportunity to participate in producing it.

This is where Parliament and regulators face an important choice.

The debate is no longer whether internet access influences democratic participation. Technological reality settled that argument years ago. The real question is whether democratic participation itself deserves explicit recognition as an essential national function deserving the same protections afforded to economic and administrative systems.

Can election integrity truly be strengthened by reducing access to information, or does confidence in electoral outcomes depend upon citizens having greater opportunities to observe, verify, discuss and scrutinize what is taking place?

These are difficult questions, but democracies rarely become stronger by avoiding difficult questions.

Perhaps the most important lesson emerging from Uganda’s recent experience is that the distinction between economic infrastructure and democratic infrastructure is becoming increasingly artificial. Markets require trust to function, just as democracies depend on public confidence in institutions and processes. Digital economies rely on connectivity to facilitate commerce, payments, innovation, and investment, while digital democracies rely on the same connectivity to enable participation, scrutiny, accountability, and the free exchange of ideas. In both cases, information flows are not merely conveniences; they are the lifeblood of the system itself.

This is why neither economies nor democracies function particularly well in darkness. When citizens are disconnected from information during moments of national importance, the effects are felt not only in political participation but also in economic activity and institutional legitimacy. The challenge for policymakers, therefore, may no longer be deciding whether democracy is essential. The more pressing question is whether our laws, policies, and regulatory frameworks are prepared to recognize that in a digital society, democratic participation has become just as essential to national resilience as banking systems, utilities, and other forms of critical infrastructure.

The challenge may be accepting that in a digital society, democracy has already become an essential service whether our laws have formally recognized it or not.

The sooner our institutions acknowledge that reality, the better prepared they will be for the elections of the future rather than the elections of the past.

The author is an Advocate of the High Court of Uganda, Head of Legal at Unwanted Witness, and a Data Protection Consultant specializing in digital governance, privacy, technology policy, and democratic accountability.

Released: Monday 29 June 2026
Kampala, Uganda