“I’m stuck. I can’t move now. I wanted to do some shopping for the week but now…” Deborah Asiimwe, a resident of Kyebando in Kampala, told The Observer after her MTN-DFCU Bank transaction would not go through on Sunday, July 5.
She was one of millions. Trouble began around midday and spread from about 1 p.m., when subscribers across Uganda found they could neither make nor receive calls, load mobile data or complete a Mobile Money transaction. MTN Uganda acknowledged the problem only after several hours, blaming a power failure at one of its data centres. In Soroti, subscriber Martin Eswau said he could not reach his mother, who was travelling from Kampala. “I expected her around 1 p.m., but it’s 3 p.m., and I can’t tell whether she’s still travelling,” he said.
What went wrong inside the data centre
At a media briefing in Kampala on July 7, chief executive Sylvia Mulinge apologised and gave the technical account. According to The Independent, an internal power protection mechanism at the Mutundwe Data Centre detected an abnormal power event and automatically shut down part of the infrastructure. Backup generators kept supplying electricity, but one component in the protection chain affected other systems. Some uninterruptible power supply units then read abnormal loads and switched themselves off to protect equipment.
“It was not anticipated,” Mulinge said, adding that the incident “had nothing to do with any of our partners.” She told reporters it was not a cybersecurity incident, that customer data stayed secure and that Mobile Money balances were safe, DCD reported.
The disruption lasted more than six hours, though service was substantially restored by early evening. Mulinge said it directly hit about 40% of MTN Uganda’s active customers. The company counts 24.4 million registered subscribers, not all of them active, and about 14.7 million Mobile Money customers. She added that Mobile Money users may have felt a wider impact because financial services are interconnected.
Money stuck in the pipes
For Mobile Money users the damage was practical. Customers could not send or withdraw money, and transactions linked to bank accounts stalled. Traders and transport operators reported delays taking payments, and some bank customers could not finish transfers tied to MTN Mobile Money.
MTN said it had compensated more than one million customers whose data bundles or other services expired during the outage; people whose bundles were still valid after restoration did not qualify. Customers with Mobile Money loans due on the day of the outage would not be penalised at once. The company declined to put a figure on lost revenue but acknowledged the financial impact was significant.
The Observer noted that Uganda has seen major telecom disruptions before: internet and social media shutdowns during the 2021 general election, and intermittent interruptions on several networks in October 2023 after damage to national fibre infrastructure. Those had other causes. This one traced back to a single power fault.
Mulinge said MTN Uganda spent Shs549.4 billion, about US$86 million, on network infrastructure and capacity upgrades in 2025 alone, while conceding that no network is entirely immune to technical failure.
Sources
- One Data Centre Took Uganda's Mobile Money Down. Interoperability Will Make the Next Outage Worse. | Aropet Joel
- MTN outage disrupts internet, Mobile Money services – The Observer Media Ltd
- MTN further clarifies July 5 service disruption – The Independent (Uganda)
- MTN Uganda blames power disruption at data center for major outage on Sunday – DCD
