As Uganda heads to the 2021 polls VPNs are going to one of the basic needs during this season as with a high possibility that the government will once more block access to social media sites like the case was in the 2016 elections. The only difference this time around is that the citizens will not be caught off guard as it was in the last polls when they woke up to blocked sites. In fact, Uganda currently does not have free access to social media sites as users either have to pay Over The Top (OTT) Tax or use Virtual Private Network Apps (V.P.Ns) to access the content on the social media.
The Social Media Tax was introduced in 2018 by the Ugandan government which hoped to widen its tax base by taxing the increasing of social media users. The move was quite unsuccessful as the tax collecting body failed to hit its target by UGX 24.9 billion last year. The tax collector blamed this on the increased use of Virtual Private Network Apps (V.P.Ns) among the country’s internet users to bypass the restrictions.
Whereas citizens continued to push and fight against the tax, some of them lost the fight along the way and decided to start paying the Shs. 200 per day to access social sites. Some said Virtual Private Network Apps affected the kind of content they access on social media as it was based on other locations such as the USA, UK, Tokyo…others said they incurred extra data costs as the apps kept running in the background which also had affected the battery lives of their devices. Others complained about the ads embedded in the freemium package offered by the apps.
Read: Bobi Wine’s National Unity Platform Set To Launch UVote App
Come 14th January 2021 everyone may need to use V.P.Ns whether you have paid OTT or not as the government through UCC is most likely to ask your internet service provider to block the social media sites.
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In this article, we look at some of the options you should consider to download ahead of the election season. TechRafiki tried to look at various aspects such as the number of downloads, the review shared on these Virtual Private Network Apps via their respective app stores, our personal experience while using these apps among other factors.
Costs/app purchases were not taken into consideration because most people will only be using these apps for a short period (like 2-3 days pre and post elections).
Here is the list of the potential V.P.Ns for you could download.
Android VPNs.
- Turbo VPN- Free V.P.N Proxy Server & Secure Service
- SuperVPN Free VPN Client
- VPN Free – Betternet Hotspot V.P.N & Private Browser
- TunnelBear: Virtual Private Network & Security
- Psiphon Pro – The Internet Freedom V.P.N
- Hotspot Shield Free VPN Proxy & Secure V.P.N
iOS/iPhone VPNs
- VPN – Master Proxy Unlimited
- HotspotShield V.P.N & Wifi Proxy
- TunnelBear: Secure V.P.N & Wifi
- VPN – Unlimited Best V.P.N Proxy
We have presented a variety of options because some of the VPNs may not be compatible with your device so feel free to try out a variety and keep the best one. For those with better free VPNs reach out to us to that we include them in here.
Also Read: UVote App v1.0.2 leaks: Appears not to be ready for use.