Last week, on November 30, during a meeting with a group of youth, they asked President Museveni about the nearly five-year ban on Facebook in Uganda.
Replied the President: ‘We will consider. We had to teach Facebook a lesson. They thought Uganda wouldn’t survive without them. You can see that Uganda is thriving and unstoppable.’ The confidence with which the President expressed his satisfaction that Facebook had been taught a lesson shows that he really believes Facebook is inaccessible in Uganda.
Now, anybody who knows half a thing about the Internet and social media knows that there is a way around the sort of blocking of websites that the President referred to. The public has simply downloaded virtual private networks (VPNs), a technology that works like a glove, masking users’ location to evade this kind of ban. This is not just Millennials and Gen-Z, but ministries, agencies, and other official bodies, Cabinet ministers, National Resistance Movement (NRM) MPs, military officers, and even State House itself.
The only time Facebook could not be accessed was the four-day period starting on Wednesday evening, January 13, 2021, when the government shut down the entire Internet on the eve of the general election. The Internet shutdown was lifted at about 11am on Monday, January 18, 2021. There are some things that can be debated and spun. We can argue about whether or not the GDP growth figures given by the government are real. We can question if the general election results declared by the Electoral Commission (EC) reflect the will of the people.
We can argue over whether Uganda is better off under the NRM government or worse off. But we can’t debate the clear fact that Facebook not only continues to be used inside Uganda, but the number of users has increased significantly since 2021. As of October 2019, there were about 2.9 million Facebook users in Uganda. Today, in December 2025, there are an estimated 3.5 million users. So, why does the President keep repeating this erroneous position that Ugandans have no access to Facebook? To analysts who study governments and political actors, President Museveni’s position on Facebook reveal a leader out of touch with both global technological trends and Ugandan society itself.
Over the past 20 or so years, the media has published reports about presidential advisers who say since their appointment, they have never met President Museveni. We are starting to see its effects on the President. Just by listening to his advisers, he would be better informed. But even if we put presidential advisers aside for a moment, how about the intelligence services like the Internal Security Organisation (ISO)? In their reports to him since 2021, hasn’t there been a single mention of the fact that Facebook is still alive and well in Uganda?
If not, why not?
All this suggests the isolation in which the most powerful person in Uganda lives. As I argued in the Sunday Monitor around August 2021, he is both powerful and powerless. One of the reasons many countries have term limits or an age limit on the presidency, apart from using it as a tool to check unrestrained power, is that most human beings, after some time or as they get older, start to lose touch with the latest trends. Their knowledge of the past remains intact, but recent trends in fashion, technology, cultural tastes, and so on become harder to keep up with as we grow older.
We see this in the mismatch between parents and their teenage children. Certain services and products are so critical to a society that the population will flout any laws that cut them off. Social media, and Facebook in particular, is one of these. The black market in foreign currencies in the 1970s and 1980s was the best example before this, of how the general population will flout arbitrary laws and restrictions in matters crucial to their day-to-day lives. Thus, the biggest ‘protest vote’ today is not the one proclaimed by the National Unity Platform (NUP) .
It is the daily decision by millions of Ugandans of all stripes and political persuasions since 2021 to continue using Facebook despite the government’s ban.
Finally, since President Museveni believes a lot in wealth creation, here is a list of the world’s 10 largest companies by market capitalisation, as of November 2025: 1) NVIDIA, 2) Apple, 3) Google, 4) Microsoft, 5) Amazon, 6) Broadcom, 7) Facebook, 8) Saudi Aramco, 9) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, 10) Tesla.
Of the 10 companies, only the Saudi national energy company, Saudi Aramco, is not a technology one.
The rest either produce technology hardware (microchips, smartphones, laptops) or services (cloud data servers, social media, AI, online shopping). Facebook is, by far, the world’s largest and most influential social media platform. About a third of the world’s population is on Facebook. As for the President’s belief that he trimmed Facebook’s wings, nothing of the sort happened. Facebook and Google basically make no money in Africa. Their presence in Africa is mainly because it gives the impression of them as global companies.
In terms of revenue, about 45 percent of Facebook’s revenue comes from North America, 25 percent from Europe, 23 percent from Asia-Pacific, and 15 percent from the rest of the world. What is the benefit of Facebook to Ugandans, apart from communicating with friends, family, and colleagues? So, contrary to President Museveni’s blissful confidence that he dealt Facebook a decisive blow, nothing of the sort happened.