Uganda’s ICT ministry in hot water over $106m data backbone

Uganda’s young ministry of information and communication technology (ICT) is in hot water over the US$106 million National Data Backbone Infrastructure (NBI) and E-government infrastructure projects.
Legislators investigating the alleged mishandling of the two projects have ordered a forensic audit of the first phase.
The ministry has over the last few months been battling allegations of fraud and mismanagement of the $30 million first phase, which was contracted to Huawei Technologies of China under the terms of the agreement.
Stakeholders who keenly follow the ICT sector first raised the red flags on the problems within the ministry some two months ago when comments were made on a popular mailing list (i-network@dgroups.org).
Members pointed out the problems around the NBI/EGI projects and the controversy surrounding the composition and recruitment of the board members of the newly created National Information Technology Agency (NITA) Uganda – the management arm of the ministry.
Badru Ntege, a technology enthusiast and investor pointed out that the ministry has failed to contract an entity or set up a special purpose vehicle to manage the two projects and as a result sections of the fibre network have been damaged and equipment was stolen.
A recent tour of the two projects by the legislators on the ICT committee confirmed Ntege’s comments.
The legislators discovered that work on the $30 million first phase, which was completed, tested and handed over to the ministry in September 2007 has sections of it that are not operational as a result of the damage and stolen equipment.
A status report from the ministry itself also points out that power generators and air conditioners were stolen from three of the four towns that were connected in the first phase.
Keen watchers of the sector, which is ever taking on a more important role in people’s lives have always wondered why the NBI has never been connected to privately run fibre networks to boost user capacity within the country.
The committee also concluded that the fibre cables that were installed may not be able to support growing internet traffic in the near future as there is not enough provision for future upgrade of the fibre cable.
It was further noted that there was no Network Operating Centre for the first phase, and neither is there a data centre and disaster recovery centre for a project of that magnitude.
It is against this backdrop that the committee has recommended that the first phase be switched on and is operational as the forensic report is awaited.
The members of parliament also called for security of equipment at the transmission sites to avoid further losses.
In 2006, the Uganda government secured a $106 million concessional loan, with a 2% interest rate payable over 20 years, with a grace period of five years, from the Chinese government to undertake the NBI/EGI.
The two projects are meant to allow for an e-government policy, reduction of expenditure in public administration and provide communication to rural communities and improve service delivery in the fields of health, education and agriculture.
The NBI project entails the laying of 2500kms of fibre optic cable countrywide to provide high speed data transmission while the EGI connects government ministries, departments and local governments into an e-government network.
The second phase of implementation, which will commence after the mess that surrounds the first phase, has been sorted. The second phase will link Uganda's borders with those of neighboring countries – taking in those areas that private players consider unviable.
According to a project brief, the backbone is to be built and owned by government, but will be used by both public and private consumers. Once completed, a special purpose vehicle will be created to lease out the lines in the backbone to whoever is interested.