There is a number worth sitting with: approximately 20,000. That is roughly how many digital platform users now have someone in their corner because of one organisation’s work. The Defenders Protection Initiative, known as DPI, has quietly become the backbone of digital safety and security for Ugandans, the organisation people call when the digital and cybersecurity threats stop being theoretical.
Founded as a registered non-profit organisation, DPI set out to do something deceptively simple yet rarely done well: make sure citizens using digital platforms are protected. Today, DPI holds an 80 percent share of entities that offer digital safety and cybersecurity nationally, a dominance built not on size or budget, but on showing up, again and again, for digital platform users that need a trusted partner.
What does that digital protection actually look like? It starts long before a crisis hits. DPI runs cyber security health checks that expose blind spots before they become emergencies, builds tailored risk assessment matrices for entities launching new projects, and trains in-house staff so that safety becomes part of an organisation’s culture, not an afterthought. When the worst does happen, DPI conducts post-incident reviews that turn a single bad day into lessons the wider community can learn from. For women, who face threats their male counterparts often do not, DPI runs dedicated cyber security safety kit distributions and safe online training, while trained digital security focal persons are deployed.
Increasingly, the work has moved online, and DPI moved with it. The organisation coordinates the Digital Security Alliance(DSA), a growing network of local digital security experts, practitioners, and organizations coordinated by Defenders Protection Initiative (DPI) to strengthen digital resilience across Uganda's ecosystem. Established to foster collaboration, knowledge sharing, and sustainable local capacity, the alliance brings together trusted professionals who support entities and communities through digital security training, mentorship, technical assistance, incident response, and peer learning.
By building a strong community of local expertise, the DSA helps ensure that entities have access to timely, context-driven digital security support. The Alliance also serves as a platform for developing local leadership, coordinating regional support networks, and advancing practical approaches that contribute to a safer and more resilient digital ecosystem.
When an entity's account is compromised, or an entity's systems come under attack, the Alliance becomes a rapid response unit, tracing vulnerabilities, securing affected systems, monitoring for further activity and documenting evidence so thats the threat does not strike twice.
DSA was tested hard during COVID-19, when the world was forced overnight onto digital tools many had never used before. Women bore the brunt, reporting digital security incidents at more than double the rate of other groups, and the pandemic widened an already painful digital divide between well-resourced and grassroots women. DPI answered with action, not just analysis, by rolling out Digital Security Clinics countrywide, deliberately seeking out the grassroots groups most often left behind.
DPI’s reach now stretches well beyond Uganda’s borders. The organisation has carried its digital protection expertise to internationan and regional forums, like FIFAfrica, DRIF, RightsCon, the largest gatherings on internet freedom. It also maintains constructive working relationships by training entities in Cambodia, Tanzania, South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, among others and developing risk assessment protocols with partners that serve the vulnerable populations like Frontline AIDS.
DPI also works on issues that rarely make headlines but matter greatly to a healthy civil society, including helping entities navigate financial transparency and regulatory compliance requirements with confidence. Through informal dialogues it calls ‘kyootos’, the organisation brings stakeholders into the same room, discussing emerging challenges early and building practical, shared solutions for the community.
About two decades in, the true measure of DPI’s impact is not in headlines but in the entities still standing and the work still getting done, safely, because someone built the safety net underneath it. In a country where digital and cyber security work carries real responsibility, that is not a small achievement. It is the quiet infrastructure that keeps Uganda’s digital platform users resilient and thriving.
