By Sempala Allan Kigozi
Wednesday, 1^st July 2026

Uganda has a data protection law.

In fact, Uganda arguably has one of the more comprehensive data protection frameworks on the continent. The Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 exists. The Regulations exist. The regulator exists. Guidance exists. On paper, Uganda entered the 2026 general elections armed with all the legal tools necessary to protect citizens’ personal information.

And yet, during the country’s most technologically intensive election in history, something remarkable happened:

The law showed up.

Implementation did not.

That, in one sentence, is the story of data protection during Uganda’s 2026 elections.

The Problem Was Never the Law

When discussions about privacy violations emerge in Uganda, the immediate instinct is often to demand new legislation. More laws. More regulations. More penalties.

But Uganda’s 2026 elections tell a different story.

The challenge was not legislative absence. It was institutional absence.

The election cycle involved biometric verification devices at every polling station, integration between voter records and national identity databases, digital voter portals, bulk political messaging, social media targeting, and increasingly sophisticated voter analytics. Personal data was not a side issue in the election process; it was the infrastructure upon which the election operated.

The irony is that the more digital our elections became, the less visible data governance became.

A Country of Rules Without Referees

Consider a few uncomfortable facts.

The Electoral Commission processed millions of voter records and operated over 109,000 biometric voter verification kits during the election cycle. Yet there was no publicly available Data Protection Impact Assessment for these high-risk systems.

The Electoral Commission itself only registered with the Personal Data Protection Office after the elections had already taken place.

Not a single political party registered with the regulator during the electoral cycle despite engaging in large-scale voter outreach and processing sensitive political preference data.

Campaigns relied heavily on bulk SMS campaigns, decentralized phone banking, social media targeting, and analytics-driven mobilisation without clearly articulated lawful bases or consent mechanisms.

None of these are legislative failures.

They are implementation failures.

Imagine This Happening in Banking

Imagine if every commercial bank in Uganda decided not to comply with banking regulations until after customers had already deposited their money.

Imagine if telecom companies processed millions of customer records without privacy notices, retention schedules, or accountability structures.

Imagine if regulators only became interested after the transactions had already happened.

There would be outrage.

There would be sanctions.

There would be consequences.

Yet somehow, when the data involved belongs to voters rather than customers, we appear willing to accept a lower standard.

Why?

Elections Are Data Events

For many citizens, elections are about rallies, campaign posters, debates, and ballot papers.

Increasingly, they are also about databases.

Your fingerprint verifies your identity.

Your National Identification Number determines your eligibility.

Your phone number receives campaign messages.

Your social media activity influences political advertising.

Your location data shapes mobilization strategies.

Your political preferences become valuable information.

Modern elections are no longer simply democratic exercises. They are massive data processing operations with democratic consequences.

And once we accept that reality, an uncomfortable question follows:

Would we tolerate this level of governance ambiguity in any other high-risk data environment?

Selective Enforcement Is Still Weak Enforcement

One of the more uncomfortable findings in the report is not merely non-compliance, but uneven compliance and uneven enforcement.

Individual actors faced scrutiny and enforcement action, while institutional non-compliance often remained largely unaddressed. The result was a growing perception that compliance expectations were not being applied equally across the ecosystem.

Data protection cannot function as an optional extra for powerful institutions and a mandatory obligation for everyone else.

The rule of law either scales upward or it collapses downward.

This Matters Beyond Elections

Businesses should pay attention.

If institutions responsible for protecting democracy struggle to operationalize data protection obligations, what message does that send to hospitals, banks, fintech companies, schools, and startups?

Policymakers should pay attention.

If Uganda’s most scrutinized public exercise still experiences implementation deficits, then annual compliance reporting and proactive oversight become more important, not less.

Citizens should pay attention.

Privacy is often framed as an individual concern, something personal and private.

In elections, privacy becomes collective.

If voters fear profiling, misuse, surveillance, or manipulation, trust in democratic institutions weakens.

And trust, once lost, is considerably harder to rebuild than databases.

The Next Election Starts Now

The report makes an important observation: Uganda’s 2026 elections did not reveal a legislative vacuum.

They revealed an implementation deficit.

That distinction matters.

Because legislative gaps can be solved by Parliament.

Implementation gaps require something harder: institutional discipline, regulatory courage, proactive oversight, and political willingness to apply the same rules to everyone.

Uganda does not need to reinvent data protection for elections.

Uganda needs to implement the protections it already has.

The next election cycle has already begun.

The question is no longer whether we have the law.

The question is whether we finally intend to use it.

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 rights, privacy, and technology governance in Africa.