Uganda’s Twitter Battleground

In a typical morning, Eron Kiiza, a human rights lawyer who represents journalists in Kampala, reads the Daily Monitor, Uganda’s leading independent newspaper, and New Vision, which is state-owned. Both, he told me, are important sources of information. But to find out what’s really going on, to follow the debates too controversial for print, Kiiza scrolls through social media, starting with Twitter. Despite the country’s sense of itself as a place with a vibrant, free press, Uganda is ranked near the bottom of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index; many of its newsrooms are controlled by the government or by private individuals with close connections to the First Family; not long ago, Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s longtime president, threatened to bankrupt the Daily Monitor over critical coverage. Twitter is where Muhoozi Kainerugaba—Museveni’s eldest son, known simply as Muhoozi—boasted that he could capture the Kenyan capital in a matter of weeks; called the M23 rebels terrorizing eastern Congo “our brothers”; and offered a hundred cows to marry Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister. Twitter is also where, last June, Agather Atuhaire, a Ugandan investigative reporter, chose to share a major scoop about politicians using taxpayer dollars to buy luxury cars. “I can’t spend a day without doing social media,” Kiiza told me.

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