KAMPALA — MTN Uganda has apologised for the nationwide service disruption that affected voice calls, internet connectivity and mobile money services on Sunday, saying the outage was caused by a major power failure at one of its data centres.
Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, MTN Uganda Chief Executive Officer Sylvia Mulinge described the disruption as an unexpected incident that inconvenienced millions of customers, businesses, merchants and government institutions that depend on the telecom's network.
“We are sorry to all our customers and everyone who was impacted,” Mulinge said.
“We know many people were greatly inconvenienced, and we sincerely apologise for the interruption.”
She said engineers worked throughout the day to restore affected systems, with all services returning before the end of Sunday afternoon.
According to Mulinge, MTN kept the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), the Bank of Uganda and other key stakeholders updated throughout the recovery process.
She reassured customers that despite the disruption, there was no compromise to customer information or mobile money balances.
“The integrity of our systems remained secure, and customer information was protected throughout the incident,” she said.
Mulinge announced that customers whose voice and data bundles expired while services were unavailable had been compensated.
“In line with our customer care commitment, we have ensured that customers whose bundles expired because they could not use them during the outage have been compensated,” she said.
She also dismissed speculation linking the outage to cybersecurity concerns, maintaining that the interruption resulted solely from the power failure at the company's data centre.
MTN Mobile Money Managing Director Phrase Lubega said the outage temporarily affected customers' ability to complete transactions but did not compromise the security of the mobile money platform.
“The integrity of the entire system remained intact. At no point were customer balances or transactions compromised,” Lubega said.
He acknowledged that the outage disrupted routine financial transactions, including payment of school fees, fuel purchases, utility bill payments, merchant payments and money transfers.
Lubega said MTN had fulfilled all regulatory reporting requirements following the incident and would continue engaging the Bank of Uganda as required.
He urged customers, agents and merchants to disregard misinformation circulating on social media, insisting that the mobile money platform is secure and fully operational.
The outage affected one of Uganda's largest digital financial ecosystems. According to MTN, its mobile money platform currently serves more than 14.7 million active customers through an extensive nationwide network of agents and merchants.
Mulinge said the company continues to invest heavily in strengthening network resilience to minimise the risk of similar disruptions.
She revealed that MTN invested more than Shs584 billion in network expansion and upgrades during 2025 and now serves more than 24 million customers across Uganda.
She said the investments are intended to improve the reliability of voice, data and mobile money services while supporting Uganda's growing digital economy.
Mulinge added that MTN has spent 27 years building communications infrastructure in Uganda and remains committed to improving service quality despite the growing complexity of digital networks.
“Technology sometimes fails. It is not an excuse,” she said.
“Our responsibility is to continue investing and strengthening our systems so that such incidents do not happen again.”
The apology follows widespread public frustration after Sunday's outage left millions of customers unable to make calls, access the internet or complete mobile money transactions for several hours, disrupting households, businesses and merchants across the country.
