Uganda’s “Social Media Pyramid Scheme” to tax Social media Users

East African Countries seem to have it ‘ more collected ‘ on the Internet’s Social sector. Uganda is also on the bandwagon after it announced it’s going to tax each social media user UGshs 100, “this to be billed daily on each SIM card that uses internet for social media.” says the State Minister for Planning, David Bahati.

According to Daily monitor, Museveni recently revealed he was planning to introduce taxes on social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Viber claiming that people use these platforms mainly for lugambo (gossip). Uganda’s Internet penetration is rather low. According to 2017 data, it has over 13 million Internet users out of a population of over 41 million, which translates to a penetration figure of 31%.

Taxing each and every Internet user Kshs 3 per day could prove to be quite lucrative for the government of Uganda, but you can bet this news will not be taken with open arms with the public.  If these tax proposals are approved by Parliament, the Minister was quoted as saying that they will begin effectively on July 1st.

We also Saw Tanzania penalizing individuals for not having passwords and also not having licenses for blogging. Is this a trend in EA or  ??