Telecommunications Reform in Uganda

The paper documents the case of Uganda's telecommunications reform. Uganda is one of only two countries in Africa that decided to privatize telecommunications in a competitive framework by selling a second national operator license.The authors find that Uganda did not sacrifice significant sales proceeds by choosing competition, but instead gained tremendously in both the speed and scale of investment from its early focus on competition.This paper - a product of Macroeconomics and Growth, Development Research Group - is part of a larger research program analyzing the effects of regulatory, legal, political, and bureaucratic institutions on telecommunications reform in Africa. The authors may be contacted at mshirley@worldbank.org, fgebreab@worldbank.org, or lhaggarty@worldbank.org