Kampala Uganda 24th March 2022. Uganda is now saving 4 trillion shillings annually in costs because of National Backbone Infrastructure says NITA-U Executive Director Dr. Hatwib Mugasa.
He made these remarks at the Huawei ICT Congress 2022 currently taking place at the Sheraton hotel Kampala up to the 24th of March 2022.
Mr. Hatwib expressed that because of the National backbone infrastructure project, government services have managed to go online and more than 1,400 Ministries, Agencies and Local Government (MDA) offices can now utilize electronic services such as integrated management systems, e-tax, e-passports, hence saving a huge chunk of money and time that would have been spent on making services available to Ugandans.
“NITA-U has been working with Huawei for more than 10 years since the National Backbone Infrastructure/e-government project was started.
We have rolled out over 4172km of backbone fibre cable in over 62 Districts of Uganda. We are also rolling out last-mile fiber cable to extend connectivity to the grass-root user all the way to the Parish.
In a few weeks from now we shall have completed 764km under the Last Mile Phase and citizens shall be able to access e-government services at 1,400 administrative locations.
By digitalizing government processes and hosting them at the National Data Centre, NITA-U has managed to saves the Government of Uganda more than 4 Trillion Shillings annually in direct public expenditure.
This cost that would have be spent on paper, manual processes and Data Centres service fees for each MDA.” he said.
Ms Amy Xia, Huawei’s Vice President Enterprise Business group emphasized the need for digitalization because it is currently an industry consensus.
She added that Huawei has heavily invested in research and development to benefit countries like Uganda and aid them in their digital process.
