In late 2019, I met @OlelDaniel after one of his comedy skits near Central Berlin. Before that I had last seen him 4 years back.

Mid way, he asked me why I wasn't considering tech opportunities in Europe? I winced here, heaved there. Then told him abt opportunities in Uganda 1/

2/ I was excited. Enchanted about the low hanging fruits back home. If anything, tech presented new opportunities and the few incidences of gov't (in)action were just bad apples. Olel wasn't convinced. I wondered why?

3/ Now it's clear, I was wrong. I started seeing trends towards control and suffocation of the internet space in Uganda as early as 2015 but ignored them. All countries have issues, I consoled myself.

4/ But then the scale of attempts by Uganda's gov't to hijack the tech narrative and mold it into its power plays is unprecedented. Uganda's trifecta of laws governing modern ICTs (computer misuse, electronic signatures, electronic transactions, 2011) are a cursory tale.

/5 But the juicy details are lost in legalese. A better example is the infamous 2018 social media tax. This was the world's first tax meant to a) punish critical voices on social media, b) while attempting to milk a digital economy that is/was a calf at the best

6/ Irrespective of the evidence i.e. the average revenue per user of voice, text, and data in Uganda is $3.5 per month compared to $1.5 for social media tax (social media tax takes up 42% of an average user of monthly spend), the gov't went ahead with its machinations

7/ Threatened by the internet's discursive power -- let alone their romanticization of "digitalization" under some national vision 2040 -- Uganda's gov't won't back down soon from their on/off relationship with the internet's Killswitch.

8/ But at the end of it all, despite the well documented political and economic losses accruing from internet shutdowns, Ugandans especially ordinary citizens, the youth, and organizations and firms will suffer the brunt. The gov't will still get appropriations from IMF & China

9/ Yet those who had hopes that things would change for the better. And even those -- like Olel -- who had long second guessed themselves, will make up their minds: to leave and consider not returning. These costs will set us back not only by ages but also by orders of magnitude

10/ I am saddened that Uganda continues to rob young people, ambitious and smart folks of the opportunity to imagine of a better and *new* Uganda. I am saddened that the price to pay for imagination, especially political, is death, both literally and figuratively. Damn You-ganda!