Ugandans to pay up to 750,000 for license plates

By Bittersweet Media |  26-02-2024

In 2019, the government procured US$126 million worth of closed-circuit television camera (CCTV) surveillance technology from the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei to monitor public spaces across Uganda. In July 2021, the government announced that it had entered an agreement with the Joint Stock Company Global Security, a Russian-registered company, to set up the Intelligent Transport Monitoring System.

Both the government and the company will operate the system for the first 10 years, after which the company will hand it over to the government, the authorities said.

​

Susan Kataike, the spokesperson for the Works and Transport Ministry, told Human Rights Watch that the new system will introduce new license plate recognition and surveillance, facial recognition, and traffic density cameras, which will “complement” an already existing network of CCTV cameras operated by the police.

As part of the system, all vehicle owners will, after February 1, 2024, be required to pay between 50,000 and 714,300 Uganda shillings (about US$13 to US$190) to register their vehicles for new plates that will have an attached sim-card-equipped device provided by the state-owned telecommunications company, Uganda Telecommunications Corporation Ltd (UTL).

​

The device will allow the government to track the location of all registered vehicles from the police national command center in real time. Foreign vehicles temporarily in Uganda will also be required to install the tracking devices for the time they are in the country.

​

The system will collect data from UTL’s telecommunications network, as well as the network of a privately owned telecommunications company, increasing the number of corporate private actors with potential access to the real-time location of all vehicles in Uganda. This creates serious human rights and security risks, Human Rights Watch said.

​

Several other countries use technology that allows for vehicles to be tracked when authorities can scan them. But Uganda’s sim-card-based approach that will allow the government to track vehicles in real time is novel.