By Denis Jjuuko
A friend was recently riding on a boda boda in a leafy Kampala suburb when another speeding boda boda approached her. The approaching boda boda had a passenger, a young man, who grabbed her bag and sped off. It was in the early afternoon. It is a normal thing in Kampala to lose your bag or be attacked like that whether you are in one of Kampala’s exclusive suburbs or not. Walking on Kampala’s streets including the busiest ones is never safe. You simply don’t know when you will be attacked.
Although she had some money and other essentials in her bag, her biggest concern was her smartphone. Like many people, a phone is one of those things that are hard to do without nowadays. She was frustrated and went on a frantic search for it. Reporting to the police and such other things.
She can’t work without a phone so she decided to replace it as soon as possible so she can carry on with her business and be able to get in touch with her family and friends.
As soon she got a replacement phone that afternoon, she started receiving several messages that scared her. The thieves who stole her phone were not ordinary ones or at least they have a network of sophisticated hackers.
The messages she was now receiving indicated that money had been transferred from her bank account to another account within the same bank. This happened within a few hours or minutes of losing her phone. She hasn’t yet been able to trace the thieves and find way to get her money back. She most likely won’t succeed.
Like most people who buy high end smartphones, she had thought it was one of those safe things and it couldn’t be easily cracked open in Kampala shortly after losing it. It seems the more technologically advanced smartphones become, the more sophisticated the hackers become too.
There must be a racket in Kampala who send young men on boda bodas to grab smartphones so they can hack them and transfer money to their accounts within a few minutes. They must be sitting somewhere and waiting whose phone they land on. And the fact that they can transfer money illegally from one bank account to another, shows how confident they are that they won’t be caught.
There is an increased number of Ugandans embracing digital banking and even a higher number using mobile money platforms. It is convenient and modern. One doesn’t have to always spend hours in the banking halls transacting. It is not 1990 anymore.
Digital banking including mobile money had led to some financial inclusion with many people, hitherto unbanked, able to access financial services. There are even people whose only access to financial services is through mobile money.
But how safe is their money? If somebody can lose a modern smartphone and within a few minutes they have lost their money, how can the banking and mobile money companies help them? How can police help them?
Largely, the majority of Ugandans are left to suffer with losses. Trips to the police to help track the thieves become endless and costly that the majority of Ugandans have given up to even reporting about it. They know there won’t be much help to recover the money. The banks and mobile money companies will largely blame the victim and do everything in their power to protect themselves.
Because we have spent much time ignoring these attacks and blaming the victims, the thieves have now gained so much confidence that they are attacking government payment systems. The case of Uganda losing Shs60 billion in 60 minutes when a payment was initiated by the Ministry of Finance to the country’s central bank is still fresh.
Although the attack happened in September 2024, not all the money has yet been recovered. And we are talking about government here with all the resources and contacts you can imagine. Imagine how much is being lost by individuals and businesses.
Like my friend, a small business owner, the thieves have set her several years back. She wasn’t able to pay her rent and salaries for April on time. She now has to borrow to keep her business running.
The police and other security intelligence organs must put in a shift to curb the rampant digital financial and other crimes. Players in the financial industry must also continuously invest in technologies that limit these crimes while sensitizing their clients on these issues otherwise gains made will be lost when people return to old ways of banking or keeping the money in their pillowcases.
The writer is a communication and visibility consultant. djjuuko@gmail.com
