Battle of the Hashtags

Inside Uganda’ s social media disinformation campaigns

COVER STORY | As Uganda edges closer to yet another election cycle in 2026, The Independent’s RONALD MUSOKE revisits one of the most controversial government decisions during election campaigns; the January 13, 2021 ban on Meta’s platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and You Tube on election eve. As he writes, in October 2024, access to Facebook, which was one of the most popular social media platforms in Uganda, remains blocked.

Campaigning in Uganda’s 2021 general election was restricted due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic after the country reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 21, 2020. In response to the pandemic, the government immediately put restrictions on public gatherings and people movement that impacted freedom of assembly and press freedom, two critical ingredients in a credible democratic election. The campaign period which lasted just 63 days, starting 9 November, 2020 up to January 11, 2021, was also the shortest in Uganda’s history.

President Yoweri Museveni, who was vying for an unprecedented sixth term, coined the phrase “scientific election” in reference to the restrictions but they didn’t affect him as he enjoyed the perks of incumbency.

The other 10 presidential candidates were, however, constrained by the heavy-handed methods the security agencies imposed to block their gatherings and public rallies. Social media platforms became critical to them for sharing their campaign schedules, manifestos and messages.

And, it appeared to work for youthful candidates, especially Museveni’s main challenger; the National Unity Platform’s (NUP) presidential candidate, Robert Ssentamu Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine). Noticing this, Museveni’s campaign also jerked up its social media usage.

DFR Lab’s investigation into ‘Sevo Bots’

At the tail-end of the campaign period, the Digital Forensic Lab (DFR Lab), a research node affiliated to the Washington D.C-based Atlantic Council, announced that it had noticed what they said were a group of Twitter (now X) accounts and Facebook pages engaging in suspicious online behaviour.

DFR Lab was at the time researching disinformation and aggression targeting Bobi Wine and the government’s violent response to riots that erupted when he was arrested on November 18, 2020. A Human Rights Watch report said government security agents killed 54 people and injured scores more.

DFR Lab says suspicious accounts and Facebook pages were using ‘fake and duplicate’ accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they actually were.

DFR said the accounts were found to be the first to retweet Museveni’s tweets with the hashtags #SecuringYourFuture and #SevoLution. “Securing Your Future” was President Museveni’s 2021 campaign catchphrase or slogan while “Sevo” is a Gen-Z moniker for the president. These accounts were also found to be on hand to respond quickly to antagonistic comments about Museveni from other users using the same copied and pasted text under the hashtag #StopHooliganism.

The same accounts allegedly ran a smear campaign against Bobi Wine. Online news organisations and a PR firm were also allegedly engaged in a coordinated campaign to promote Museveni and pull down his challengers. DFR Lab says public relations firms that were part of the network had a combined following of over 10,000 accounts.

Meta and Twitter reaction

When the DFR Lab’s report was shared with both Meta (the parent company of Facebook) and Twitter, the two tech giants separately investigated and concluded that the erring accounts violated rules regarding “Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour,” and government non-interference. Between Jan. 8-10, 2021, Meta and Twitter disabled 32 Facebook pages, 220 user accounts, 59 groups and 139 Instragram profiles of pro-Museveni supporters.

Museveni accused Facebook of “arrogance.” Then on January 13, 2021, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), the national communications regulator, banned and disabled access to Meta’s platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and You Tube.

Museveni’s digital army blocked

This article asks whether there was merit in the decision by Meta and Twitter to block those accounts. If so, who were the people behind this scheme? And why did they choose to go this route during the fractious presidential campaigns? Most importantly, if allowed to continue, what are the consequences of such behaviour on democracy, human rights and governance in Uganda?

When there is deliberate use of multiple fake social media accounts to mislead or manipulate users by creating a false impression of widespread support or opposition of a person or an issue, Meta flags it as “coordinated inauthentic behaviour.”

“These activities are typically deceptive, aimed at distorting public discourse,” says Wesley Kambale, a computer scientist and machine learning engineer. “Under this behaviour, multiple accounts post the same or similar information within a short timeframe (usually under two minutes); then the accounts involved amplify each other’s posts by liking, reposting, commenting, all the while pretending to be independent and separate voices unknown to each other.”

Patricia Kahill, a manager at a top content creation and marketing firm in Kampala says, in the context of important events like a general election, the practice is harmful because it undermines the integrity of online discourse, misleads the public, and can influence electoral outcomes with the distortions.

Agencies behind digital war

According to the DFR Lab investigation, the network behind the “coordinated inauthentic content” during the 2021 presidential campaign was divided into clusters. One group posted in support of President Museveni and the ruling NRM party; another posted spurious messages about Bobi Wine and his supporters while another posted promotional content about Museveni’s son, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as a future presidential candidate.

Each cluster would create fake and duplicate Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts that deliberately disseminated information using misleading images, claims, and hashtgs. The clusters then amplified one another’s false messages by copying and pasting posts and hashtags across dozens of pages and groups created by the fake user accounts.

The DFR Lab investigation linked some of the clandestine online activity to a government agency known as the Government Citizens Interaction Centre (GCIC) which at the time was under the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance led by Minister Frank Tumwebaze.

The other entity was a PR firm known as Robusto Communications. Behind the scenes, the PR firm also ran an online “news outlet” known as Kampala Times.

The Independent has dug into the works of Robusto Communications Co. Ltd. Its registration shows it was incorporated on May 03, 2019 by Okello Dickens and Adong Sharon with 28 objectives; including “carrying on the business of media monitoring, public relations, brand communication and strategy.”

Okello, who at the time was a journalist working with ChimpReports, an online news website, remains unapologetic for all the accusations levelled against him by the DFR Lab report.

“They accused me of orchestrating and commanding forces against the Opposition (but) there was no single day that I and my team did so,” he told The Independent in an interview done in a Kampala suburb near the northern shores of Lake Victoria.

He says he was contracted during the election campaign period to “push the pro-incumbent campaign.” “My work was simple; what are the achievements of the NRM government?” he says.

He says his second assignment was to douse the “disinformation flames” coming from the opposition NUP camp. “They were posting pictures from West Africa and saying their supporters were being shot dead or slaughtered. Some pictures of dilapidated hospital buildings from DR Congo were shared saying they were in Uganda.” he said.

“My company has the infrastructure to establish the exact location (geolocation); this picture you have just posted, where was it taken? When was it taken and by whom?” he said.

“They (NUP supporters) were saying the healthcare system is dead but statistics from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were saying different things. If you looked at Uganda’s infant mortality rate or maternal mortality rate or life expectancy, are the figures still the same since 1990, when I was born? Definitely not.”

He says it is unfortunate the Atlantic Council (DFR Lab) came in and turned around and said they were the ones spreading disinformation.

“If you pick something negative; and I am not saying anything negative is bad especially if it is happening, but if it is not real, why should you bring it up? Why should we allow dishonesty to come into political campaigns? Let them be honest; just present your plans before the electorate but don’t peddle disinformation.”

Okello also dismisses the DFR Lab allegation which linked him to the government.“ I have never worked and I don’t work for the government; I am a private citizen. If I do some work for the government, it is on consultancy basis,” he told The Independent. “I am not into partisan politics; I am pro-Uganda,” he says, “But they just went ahead and blacklisted me without asking me anything. So, what kind of democracy is that?”

Okello says all the Facebook accounts of his entire team at his firm comprising 17 young tech-savvy people he was working with, were blocked following the DFR Lab investigation. “Even the one for my girlfriend; I don’t know how she got into the mix.”

He says up to now, if he were to open a Facebook account on his handset, “it would be blocked in two minutes even if he used a fake Congolese name or fake email; his account would be shut down.”

“What happened in January 2021 was the handiwork of the Atlantic Council, not Facebook. They just happened to act upon the Atlantic Council’s report. Yes, they said they did their internal investigations after receiving the Atlantic Council’s report but Facebook has its own internal regulatory mechanisms. Why did they wait for the Atlantic Council to act?”

Okello told The Independent that one of the reasons he founded Robusto Communications was to fight against disinformation. “I used to be Secretary General of the Uganda Parliamentary Journalists Association and one time in 2018 we had a meeting with the former French Ambassador to Uganda (Stephanie Rivoal).

Ahead of that year’s Kampala Geopolitics Conference, the ambassador invited Okello and the late MP Kato Lubwama, who was a member of the Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Media, for a private meeting at her residence in Kampala.

After the meeting, the ambassador suggested that Okello be part of a panel on disinformation during the Geo-politics conference. “After that conference I realised there were so many gaps around information dissemination on social media platforms in Uganda.”

“I realised the advent of social media had brought with it so many positives; people got a platform to interact and share information but it also brought in people who bastardise information, and I thought about who can correct things in this era of disinformation. That is how Robusto Communications came in.”

“Disinformation is real; it exists. There are people who have made it a choice or their job to put in public things which are not right when they consciously know it is not right,” he told The Independent, “I see disinformation as intellectual corruption.”

It’s interesting that Okello talks about disinformation with an abhorrent tone and yet the DFR Lab investigation put him at the centre of the disinformation campaign during the 2021 presidential election campaign. The Robusto Communications’ owned Kampala Times was accused of often stealing and reposting on its website content from more credible news titles such as Daily Monitor. The online publication was shut down almost immediately after the 2021 elections.

Indeed Okello accepted working with some of the names mentioned in the investigation (Ritah Nakamya and Innocent Vuga). He told The Independent that the “plagiarism incidents were regrettable.”

‘GCIC did nothing wrong’

The other agency at the centre of the DFR Lab investigation was the GCIC. The Independent talked to Duncan Abigaba, the immediate former Deputy Director at GCIC; a government agency that was originally established to give citizens a platform to share their issues with the government.

Abigaba told The Independent that what happened in 2021 was “a targeted Western campaign against President Museveni.”

“It was a targeted campaign against the communications function or team of the president because there is nothing wrong that we did that the Opposition did not do in a worse manner,” he told The Independent. “There was no single disinformation in that campaign from my perspective. I remember my roles very well.”

He says wherever the President had a rally, he had a brief of issues that the community wanted to hear about – health, roads, education, government socio-economic programmes etc. Abigaba says his team of 15 were sent the President’s write-up to share on their platforms.

“This is all we did but this is what they called syndicated or coordinated inauthentic behaviour,” he says, “I disagree with this framing because we absolutely did nothing wrong.”

He instead accuses the opposition NUP communication camp of wrong doing.“They were involved in character-assassination,” he says, “If anybody wanted to punish coordinated inauthentic behaviour, they would have punished the NUP team.”

Abigaba told The Independent that, his agency, the GCIC, even had sanctions against publishing fake content. “Internally, we had a fact-checking system because we know the President values his campaigns and in his mind, he knows he is a performer so when he is on a campaign trail he wants his team to do one thing: tell people what his government has done and what it is going to do for them.”

Abigaba told The Independent that the Meta sanctions targeted the #SecuringYourFuture hashtag of the Museveni campaign. So, could there have been other pro-Museveni volunteers somewhere else pushing disinformation? “If they existed, they were never part of his set-up,” Abigaba told The Independent.

A story of two hashtags

The Independent reached out to Tessa Knight, the DFR Lab’s research associate for Sub-Saharan Africa. We also reached out to Eirman Kheir, Meta’s Public Policy Leader for Africa, Middle East and Türkiye as well as Farai Morobane, Meta’s Public Policy Manager for Human Rights for Sub-Saharan Africa but, following a couple of months of waiting, we did not get any response from the three by the time we went to press.

However, a separate investigation by Thraets; a regional civic tech research lab, found similar patterns as those uncovered by the DFR Lab team.

The researchers at Thraets particularly investigated the coordination and inauthentic behaviour of the actors who were tasked with promoting the #StopHooliganism hashtag; a campagin that targeted Bobi Wine’s NUP and its supporters. Thraets’ investigation revealed how the accounts were specifically created in preparation for the 2021 elections and went into overdrive after the November riots of 2020. “These accounts jumped right into the use of the hashtag #StopHooliganism campaign,” a researcher at Thraets told The Independent.

Thraets says the people behind the accounts labelled “Sevo Bots” often used web browsers and not their mobile phones to carry out the work. They shared tweets from users like @nyamadon (the twitter handle of Don Wanyama, the then Senior Press Secretary to President Yoweri Museveni). In other instances, the trolls retweeted content of fellow trolls within the network.

The Thraets investigation also found most of the Sevo Bots often used random names, a few adopted local names but there were also random fake names like @senatorxyz, Walter Raleigh, @QBanks256, QueenSeraBanks and many others randomly generated for the operation.

The Thraets investigation noted that the Sevo Bots were created around October/November 2020 and the first “seeder” of the disinformation using the hashtag “#StopHooliganism” was a user who goes by the fake name “Siima K” under the twitter handle: https://twitter.com/k_siima.

#StopHooliganism vs #StopPoliceBrutalityinUganda

But, as the campaign intensified, Thraets noted how composure of the top 100 tweets used in November and December were as follows—47% were generic or neutral hashtags, 36% were leaning towards pro-opposition party while the remaining 17% were strongly leaning towards the pro-ruling party actors.

“It was a story of two hashtags #StopPoliceBrutalityinUganda (Opposition-leaning #Hashtag) vs #StopHooliganism (NRM leaning). We observed what we deemed to be a hashtag war ongoing especially between these two groups behind #StopPoliceBrutalityinUganda versus #StopHooliganism,” the researcher at Thraets told The Independent.

“We believe the former was being pushed by pro-Opposition party leaning actors while the latter was pushed by pro-ruling party actors. We also noticed the occurrence of bots and sock puppets by showing when they spiked and explained the different hashtags and content they pushed to counter the narrative.”

In their analysis, Thraets noted a specific behaviour where pro-ruling party hashtags like #StopHooliganism versus Pro-Opposition hashtags like #StopPoliceBrutalityinUganda that showed extreme usage out of portions whenever there was an arrest of any presidential candidate; especially Bobi Wine.

This was particularly the case on November 03, 2020 (Bobi Wine’s nomination), November 15, 2020, November 18, 2020 (Bobi Wine’s arrest in Luuka District) and November 27, 2020 when the partisan hashtags shot up in activity.

During this period, Thraets’ investigation noticed disinformation being pushed by actors from both ends with the use of “out of context” imagery. “Our data reveals that a huge percentage of the hashtags were related to pro-opposition party leaning hashtags like #FreeBobiWine, #StopPoliceBrutalityinUganda, #WeareRemvingADictator, #Kyagulanyi4President while the pro-ruling party leaning hashtags mainly concentrated around hashtags like #SecuringYourFuture, #M7UGsChoice, #StopHooliganism and #VoteM72021,” the researcher told The Independent.

Digital warfare rages on

As we write this article, in October 2024, Facebook which was one of the most popular social media platforms in Uganda remains blocked. But, it appears, there are people associated with both the ruling and opposition parties who have deliberately adopted disinformation as a tactic to counter narratives that are deemed “anti-government” or “anti-Opposition.”

In January this year, a BBC investigation uncovered yet another network of fake social media accounts in Uganda that are believed to be responsible for disseminating pro-government messages (propaganda). The same accounts were also found to be at the centre of targeting government critics.

At least 200 social media accounts mainly on Facebook and X were found to be using stolen images as profile pictures of popular international models, influencers and actresses, the BBC noted. Once again, the Government Citizen Interaction Centre (GCIC), a government agency which is now affiliated to State House, is said to be at the centre of this propaganda.

The question is, why is the government, with all the resources (both financial and human) at its disposal, moving away from conventional communication channels and resorting to online disinformation campaigns? And how did we reach here?

Dr Ivan Lukanda, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Makerere University says every government, especially governments in authoritarian states, have people who are either paid or voluntarily offer to do smear campaigns on behalf of the government.

He says there will always be people who are ready to do the dirty work for the government and their work will depend on existing technology. “So, if you have new technology, then those people will just adapt to the new technology and continue doing the old things.”

Govt going rogue?

Patricia Kahill says some governments are increasingly turning to disinformation campaigns in an attempt to maintain control, suppress dissent, and manipulate public perception. This, she says, is especially so in countries where political opposition is perceived to be stronger or where public opinion is divided.

“Controlling the narrative can be seen as a strategic advantage,” Kahill told The Independent. “In the case of Uganda, the government’s involvement in disinformation campaigns reflects on a strategy to consolidate power in the face of growing opposition and criticism.”

Dr Hannah Muzee (PhD), a governance expert told The Independent on August 29 that even when the government may not sanction disinformation campaigns, there are its beneficiaries who take it upon themselves to spread disinformation.

“Those who want to benefit from the regime maliciously will go to great lengths to discredit the opposition to gain political mileage for the government,” she says, “They will do what it takes to safeguard what is most likely livelihood which is usually ill-gotten.”

According to the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, there is a growing trend of domestic political actors deploying targeted disinformation schemes which is increasingly making it difficult for the public to discern between facts and ‘fake news’ while following political, social, and security developments across Africa. Apparently, experts argue, the intent of disinformation is to create fear and confusion to advance the political purposes of those plying the falsehoods.

Experts on disinformation say this practice distorts democratic engagement by convincing people to believe things that are not true, which can be especially harmful if focused on demonising political opponents, distorting policy debates or undermining democratic institutions.

These techniques push independent voices out of public spaces and are sometimes considered a new form of censorship. Gilbert Sendugwa, the Executive Director of the Uganda chapter of the Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC) says there is growing public mistrust of government and its institutions and leaders in most African countries, including Uganda.

“So, you have to find a way of going around the trust deficit to make sure that your message or the agenda you are pushing through wins. That is the driver of most of the disinformation, especially by actors in formal government institutions.”

Godwin Toko, the Deputy Executive Team Lead at AGORA Centre for Research, a Kampala-based non-profit that is dedicated to promoting human rights, public accountability and social justice told The Independent on Aug.27 that he is not surprised the Uganda government appears to be taking on the habit of spreading disinformation.

“We have a government that basically disregards ethical standards as long as it gets its votes, it wins elections and keeps itself entrenched in power,” he said, “Whether it means holding people without trial or trying civilians in the Court Martial, teargassing kids marching against corruption and all those kinds of things.

“You must judge this government from that pattern; and from that pattern government now sees social media as new place for digital warfare. Of course, there are people who are anti-government and are also spreading fake news against the government,” he says.

Perry Aritua, the Executive Director of Women’s Democracy-Uganda Chapter agrees with both Sendugwa and Toko. “When government entities decide to get involved in disseminating wrong information, there are so many consequences,” she told The Independent on Aug.29.

Interestingly, both Dickens Okello and Duncan Abigaba separately told The Independent that they are against disinformation campaigns. Even Emmanuel Lumala Dombo, the Director of Information, Publicity and Public Relations at the NRM Secretariat agrees.

He told The Independent on Sept.5 that “If information is not properly managed and it is deliberately skewed to achieve a mischievous objective, it can have very dangerous repercussions, not only for the individuals participating or protagonists but also the entire country.”

Will 2026 be worse?

It is hard to say how social media-based disinformation during the 2021 presidential election campaigns affected the final outcome of the election but, heading into the 2026 elections, experts are worried.

Many are predicting 2026 to be a ‘proper digital election’ with every serious candidate having a huge presence on all the available social media platforms where the electorate, millions of whom will be voting for the first time, are. For the ruling government, will this be a Catch-22? How will the government which wants to win the hearts and minds of Gen-Z voters convert them, well knowing that the social media platforms also have millions of young users who do not like the ruling party? How will they harness the power of social media influencers?

A 24-year old social media influencer who boasts a combined following of about 600,000 on X, Instagram, LinkedIn and Tik Tok says she is currently undecided on whether she will take on partisan politics-related influencing gigs but knows colleagues who will happily do so without any second thoughts.

She told The Independent that most Ugandan social media influencers have their real accounts and then a number of catfish accounts so when they get a gig from let’s say, of a political party, they will not refuse; they will use the catfish account to push out the gig.

“When you have a catfish account, you are not who you are in real-life, so you can attack anyone or put out wrong information on anything or just post any agenda and no one will know,” she said.

Julius Mucunguzi, the head of public relations at the Electoral Commission says they treat misinformation, disinformation and fake news as “a very serious matter.”

“We want to call upon stakeholders to increase the levels of media and digital literacy so that people are able to know what is fact and what is a lie,” he says, “Credible, free and fair elections are a responsibility of every Ugandan.”