Nairobi – Ugandan opposition chief Bobi Wine approached the January 15 elections with an uncommon enchantment: obtain an app. He was listened to. The full blocking of the web connection in Uganda, suspended since final January thirteenth in view of the final polls two days later, triggered a report leap in downloads of Bitchat: a messaging software that lets you talk offline and overcome the paralysis of the community launched by the federal government, the identical restriction skilled within the 2016 and 2021 elections.
The Binance newspaper recorded at the very least 400 thousand downloads of the service already initially of the month of the vote, with a increase that made the app rocket to the highest of the native charts of the digital shops App Store and Google Play. Its function as an “anchor” in political communications had already emerged within the protests in Nepal and Madagascar in 2025 and can be returning to the fore in Iran, shaken by the mobilization towards Tehran’s leaders.
What Bitchat is and the way it works
Bitchat is a messaging software developed to permit offline communications, grafting onto a Bluetooth mesh community: a know-how that enables gadgets to trade messages with different customers close by, with out the necessity for connection to the community now frozen by Kampalla. It was launched by Jack Dorsey, the founding father of Twitter who has repeatedly expressed his regret relating to the evolution of his creation from a platform to a personal firm, now within the – controversial – fingers of Elon Musk. Starlink, Musk’s satellite tv for pc Internet service, complied with the Ugandan authorities orders to cease the community on election days and favored Bitchat’s exploits.
Network paralysis is an anticipated follow in Uganda, which has simply suffered two an identical blackouts within the final two elections. Even on the time, the incumbent chief and foremost candidate was Yoweri Museveni, the 81-year-old president who’s getting ready for his seventh consecutive time period in a local weather of repression contested by the opposition and native organizations. And even on the time the ax of connections had fallen near the vote, a widespread censorship on a continental scale. According to analysis relaunched by the newspaper The Conversation, between 2016 and 2024 alone, a complete of 193 “shutdowns” had been recorded in 41 completely different nations. The path continued in 2025 with circumstances like that of Tanzania, overwhelmed by protests towards the “farcical” vote that led to the election of incumbent president Samia Hassan.
https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/uganda-censura-internet-fa-schizzare-app-bitchat-AIb7rhs