That is absolutely the case. The cable came to UG not BECAUSE the gov’t did anything, it was consumer demand that led the private sector to lay that cable. The gov’t had zero hand in SEACOM happening. Uganda as a nation has no stake in TEAMS either, they put all their eggs into one (EASSy) basket, which may or may never happen.

it can easily become a tool for propaganda…

The internet is the single most important innovation for Africa’s growth.

Just so you know, I generally steer away from politics. The riot weekend was the closest I’ve ever been to being “an activist” and I made sure my tweets were as neutral as I could make them.

My post was targeted at the technology, not the political affiliations, ergo, I cannot respond to this, I shall leave it for the professionals.

But still… My goodness, what a rant! And by all means, hijack away! Hehe.

Unfortunately, citizen journalism is too unprofessional. Now, even professional journalists fell from the standards, but perhaps better the devil you know (that is, the devil you can arrest).
I mean, do you even begin to factor in the amounts of bias that pervaded this thing you call citizen journalism?

Did you see any pro-Museveni entries? I mean, Museveni has supporters, doesn’t he? Maybe they don’t tweet, but that is the problem. This “journalism” is so steeped in groupthink, colonised by like-minded drones who fall in the same generational group and who are more-excited about thinking alike than about thinking the situation over. And they believe that pronouncing that Museveni has “failed” or “fucked up” is somehow a heroic act that we should sit up and pay attention to, stroking our chins and wondering at the wisdom and logic that must have led to this weighty, elusive conclusion; these stupid children of these days who think that having voted someone into office somehow means that it’s paradise from here on. :-p The closest any of us alive in Uganda today ever came to paradise, ironically, is this last week.
It’s touchingly sweet of our arm-chair political philosophers to blame Museveni because some idiot has lit a tyre in the middle of the road. I see the logic, friends. I see the logic. And when the country hastens the arrival of the fibre-optic cable? Ah, that’s not the government’s credit, friends, that’s our credit.

Ugandans – especially this generation – make me want to spit at my monitor.

The predictable uniformity was annoying and disgusting. I’m with Seth Godin. The majority of people suck and suffer from huge biases and are only out to get laid, for they are merely sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, not the gods and goddesses of Truth. Most people only pretended to have passion on the issue, because, well, how else would we think they are relevant? How else would we notice them? How else will we cite them? How else will we sight them?
Most people thought that, with those broad generalisations and curt dismissals of Museveni, they were doing something brave, novel and worth listening to. In this “citizen journalism”, I learnt more about attention freaks than I did about politics. It shows that no report is so biased, so riddled with un-backed opinion, no accusation-of-a-hated-party is too outlandish to be suspect. We all just re-tweeted, myself included. (I am one of the accused, and this is my way of saying “Guilty as charged.”)

But I was glad for the #kampala hashtag. It kept me updated. Thanks, man. And I added it to Twitter UTL. You send ‘twitter #kampala’ to 2299, for example. (Or ‘Twitter #Uganda’, whatever hashtag you want.) In that wise, citizen journalism can’t be replaced. But in other cases, it’s a cancer.
(Most people forget that the media has caused four genocides for every zero it prevented.)

I was supposed to prepare a polemic filled with all the insane words I have in my book, but I have to work on Twitter UTL. Keep ‘em comin’, y’all. You never know when we’ll need it, as Wise Solomon said.