MOBILE MONEY AND SOCIAL MEDIA TAXES IN UGANDA
Uganda has gone ahead and rolled out a controversial daily levy on citizens for using social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Skype, enraging many of its online citizens. The major telecom companies, MTN, Airtel and Africell, set up special mobile money menus for users to pay the tax or be denied access to a list of 58 websites, apps and voice calling platforms. While Uganda’s government has blocked internet access in the past, most notably in the run-up to the February 2016 elections, it had never officially implemented targeted website or app blocking on scale. As it turns out, it was actually pretty straightforward for a network operator to set up such a tax collection and enforcement operation, according to local telecom engineers who spoke to Quartz on condition of annonymity. These telecoms insiders explain it hasn’t required any new technology or external assistance to implement the “tax-or-block” system. Local telecom engineers only had to write new rules