Ugandan’s government recently announced plans to install GPS tracking systems on all “vehicles, motorcycles, and vessels” in the country, Quartz Africa reported Friday.
Uganda’s Ministry of Works and Transport on July 23 awarded the Moscow-based Joint Stock Company Global Security a ten-year surveillance contract that would allow Uganda’s government to install GPS monitoring systems on all automobiles and vessels in the East African country. The arrangement forces individual car or motorcycle owners in Uganda to pay a $5 fee to install the government-owned GPS tracker on his or her personal vehicle.
The government also expects individual vehicle owners to bear the cost of a new registration number plate required under the arrangement. An automobile owner who attempts to remove the new registration plate or tracker from his or her vehicle without permission from the Ugandan government faces financial penalties.
“Any revenue generated by the process will be shared between the government and Joint Stock, as per the agreement,” the online news outlet Quartz Africa reported on August 6.
Kampala will focus its efforts on installing GPS trackers on Uganda’s “boda bodas,” or motorcycles used by millions of people throughout Uganda daily in lieu of a viable public transport system.
“Expanding the state surveillance capacity to boda-bodas will cover much of the population given their reach and relevance to Uganda’s economy,” Quartz Africa noted Friday. “It will also grant the Ugandan state access to data on [the] movement of millions of people they transport every day.”
“Over the past decade, boda-bodas have been used in several high-profile assassinations and other crimes [in Uganda],” according to the news site.
Ugandan state prosecutors have failed to secure convictions for suspects in “at least 10 recent high profile assassination attempts — all of them involving boda-bodas,” Quartz Africa noted August 6.
“The assassins on boda-bodas easily disappear after eliminating their targets. Regular commercial boda-boda riders are also targeted by criminals using the same [mode of transport] who steal their boda-bodas, in many cases, killing them,” the news site revealed.
Ugandan government officials have cited the connection between boda-bodas and increased crime as a reason for targeting the popular mode of transport in their new security crackdown. Kampala’s plan to install GPS trackers on all modes of transportation in Uganda threatens to erode the individual privacy rights of Ugandan citizens. Some opponents of the decision argue that it violates Ugandan law.
“This is an expansion of the state’s plan of surveilling on everybody, they want to use this GPS data collection to track opposition politicians, activists, and journalists,” Dorothy Mukasa, the director of Unwanted Witness, a Kampala-based digital communications rights watchdog, told Reuters on July 29.
“During Uganda’s January 2021 elections, surveillance, and monitoring technology purchased from Chinese tech giant Huawei was used by the government to crack down on dissent. Last year, the country’s security forces used the same cameras to target protesters following the arrest and detention of two presidential candidates,” Quartz Africa noted Friday.