59% of Uganda’s Top 1000 Taxpayers Lack Corporate Websites

Posted on June 4, 2015

59% of Uganda’s Top 1000 Taxpayers Lack Corporate Websites

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59% of Uganda’s Top 1000 Taxpayers face higher operational costs and reduced profitability due to lack of Corporate Websites

London/Kampala: The majority of Uganda’s Top 1000 Taxpayers do not have a corporate website thereby forfeiting opportunities to cut costs, improve service delivery and strengthen customer loyalty.

Research by the Digital Impact Awards Africa (DIAA) project indicates that 59% of the organisations lack a corporate website to support their business goals. Given that the organisations surveyed are Uganda’s largest taxpayers, the failure to use the Internet effectively increases the cost of doing business in the country, reduces corporate profitability and thus hampers national economic growth.

DIAA is a project of Cyberplc Limited and HiPipo (U) Limited.

“We were very surprised by the findings. In 2015, a corporate website should be taken for granted in the same way as a Post Office box. If your customers and business partners cannot find you online, you do not exist. Indeed, Google recently changed its ranking of websites to award more marks to mobile adaptable websites. As we revealed in our 2014 DIAA Report, mobile is increasingly the first, and in the majority of cases, the only channel through which people access the digital infrastructure in Africa. Hence, the lack of a mobile adaptable website or dedicated mobile websites/apps – let alone no corporate website at all – limits the number of online users leading to increased transactional costs,” says Innocent Kawooya, Cyberplc Partner and CEO HiPipo.

The corporate website survey is part of a Research Series covering topics including mobile and social media adoption, cybersecurity in mobile money services and electronic commerce.

Mr Kawooya added that, “The average tax return for organisations among top 1000 tax payers is over 1 billion UGX and the lowest tax return from the list is over 100 million UGX. With the cost of setting up a decent corporate website ranging from a few thousand dollars, all organisations on this tax payers list should be able to afford a website.”

“Maximising the Digital Dividend” is the theme of the Digital Impact Awards Africa. DIAA focuses on the transformative capacity of technology-based solutions with the main focus being digital inclusion, financial inclusion and cybersecurity i.e. building confidence and trust in the use of digital systems. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations’ specialised agency for ICTs, recently named DIAA as one of the projects to watch during the celebration of its 150th Anniversary. The ITU identified DIAA amongst projects promoting awareness of the benefits of ICTs worldwide.

The next phase of this survey will look at social media embrace of the top 1000 taxpayers and in August DIAA will present the ranking of top 50 organisations embracing the digital infrastructure.

DIAA dinner will be held on 13th August 2015 at Serena Hotel Kampala. Nomination will be released on 8th June 2015.

Digital Impact Awards Africa is proudly presented by Cyberplc and HiPipo, supported by NITA-U and leading organisations in the digital space.

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