18 February 2020

Uganda and neighbouring Tanzania have in place some of the harshest SIM card monitoring policies in the world, according to a new report.

Research conducted by UK-based pro-consumer website Comparitech said based on a point scoring metric of 0 – 21 (policy portfolios are evaluated from strongest to weakest –the lower the score, the stronger the portfolio), Uganda scored 15 while Tanzania scored 19.

To make things worse, Uganda scored the same as North Korea, a country known for trampling on the privacy of its citizens.

The report highlighted Burundi, Kenya and Rwanda among those African countries with relatively good SIM card monitoring policies. Kenya scored 12 points, Rwanda scored 11 points and Burundi scored nine points.

Elsewhere, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Ethiopia each scored eight points.

Tanzania and Uganda have adopted biometric SIM card registration and the relevance of this is reflected in parts of the report.

“A SIM card is more than a phone,” read an excerpt from the report. “It allows authorities to track people’s locations and movements and all of their online activities-websites visited, search queries, purchases, and more can be traced back to their devices.”

It also said that creating a database of citizens and their mobile numbers restricts private communication, increases the potential of them being tracked and monitored, enable governments to build in-depth profiles of their citizens and risks private data failing into wrong hands.

The reason Tanzania had a poorer rating than Uganda, the report said, was because individuals are allowed up to eight SIM cards from different service providers. This is exacerbated by the fact  the country’s law enforcement does not have invasive interception tools, although it can access data without a warrant.

Uganda started a mandatory sim-card registration in 2012, mainly to fight crime.