James Saaka, the former Executive Director of the National Informational Technology Authority (NITA-U), is dead.
Saaka, who served NITA-U for over ten years succumbed to COVID-19 weeks after testing positive of the deadly virus.
The deceased was hospitalized at Case Clinic in Kampala a fortnight ago.
“He has just passed on,” a close associate of Saaka told this website at around 2:00pm today.
Saaka’s death has shocked Uganda’s ICT sector in which he was known as a genius.
The development also underlines the deepening COVID-19 pandemic crisis in the country.
Official statistics show COVID-19 has so far killed 207 people in Uganda since March 2020.
Saaka presided over the IT revolution in Uganda which saw the rollout of the largest and most stable optical fiber cable network aptly named the National Data Transmission Backbone Infrastructure (NBI) with presence in over 40 major towns and districts.
He oversaw the maiden Tier 3 Cloud data center project and ensured Government Ministries and departments had functional websites.
To date, the ICT sector is growing at rate of 25 percent, the fastest growing sector in the economy.
“If we wake up one day and all the 40 million Ugandans can access all government services online, then we can perhaps call it a day,” said Saaka in 2019.
“Until that day, we and our partners will continue to strive to entrench the e-Government culture within not only our systems but our core beliefs,” he added.
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