The Executive Director of the National Information Technology Authority- Uganda (NITA-U), Dr Hatwib Mugasa, announced that Uganda is currently retaining US$1.1 trillion annually due to its national backbone project.
Making a statement at the Huawei Congress 2022 held in Kampala, the Director mentioned that in light of the national backbone project, the government systems have since been able to go online, with more than 1 400 ministries, agencies, as well as government offices able to use electronic services, including integrated management systems, e-tax, and e-passports. This is meant to save time and money, he mentioned.
The Director added, “NITA-U has collaborated with Huawei for over ten years since the National Backbone Infrastructure e-government project was established. Since the project started, 4172km of backbone fibre cable have been distributed in over 62 districts of Uganda. In addition, the Director also stressed their intent to distribute the last mile fibre cable to increase connection in the rural settlement reaching Parish.
Furthermore, in the coming weeks, the aim is to finish 764km under the Last Mile Phase, and the residents will have access to e-government services at 1,400 administrative locations.
NITA-U indicated that digitising of government processes has anchored them at the National Data Centre to save the government more than US$1.1 trillion in public expense.
This is essentially an amount that would have been spent on paper, manual processes and datacentres service fees.
The Vice President of Huawei’s Enterprise Business Group, Amy Xia, stressed the importance of digitising. “Since digital transformation is becoming an industry consent, the mandate has moved from ‘do we go digital’ to ‘how to go digital’.
The entity has contributed extensively to research and development for Uganda to create new value.
The Huawei ICT Congress 2022, themed “Lighting up the Future”, is organised by Huawei Uganda and aimed at helping businesses with ICT and digitisation.
