Image of a local internet cafe in Uganda’s town. Courtesy Photo.
The consumption of internet pornographic materials and information has hit an all-time-low in Uganda, according to the latest web rankings.
As of 17 October 2019, Alexa, an American internet traffic analysis company based in San Francisco, on its website shows a sharp fall in Uganda’s internet pornography audience, with sites like – Porn555, Pornhub, Xvideos and Youporn – no longer being listed among nation’s 10 or even 50 most visited pages.
In March 2019, the same site (Alexa) had ranked one of the porn sites ahead of all local websites, including news and government websites in Uganda.
The Amazon subsidiary had placed Porn555 in position six, behind Wikipedia and ahead of Daily Monitor, Twitter, BBC among others.
What has caused the viewership drop?
In 2018, Internet service providers in Uganda blocked pornography websites in fulfillment of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) orders.
Around the same time, government, through the Ministry of Ethics and Integrity inaugurated a pornographic control committee to prevent the use or spread of pornographic materials and information.
However, users of Virtual Private Network (VPN) can access the banned sites, sources say. VPN works by routing one’s device’s internet connection through a chosen VPN’s private server rather than the user’s internet service provider (ISP) so that when data is transmitted to the internet, it comes from the VPN rather than the subject’s computer.
According to Section 13 of the Anti-Pornography Act 2014, a person shall not produce, traffic in, publish, broadcast, procure, import, export, sell or abet any form of pornography and anyone who commits such is liable, on conviction, to a fine of Shs10m or imprisonment not exceeding 10 years.
