February 22, 2006
Uganda parties mobilise support with SMS
In Uganda, political candidates are using the Internet extensively, marketing candidates through websites while their campaign agents bombard voters with text messages on mobile phones. Nation Media reports.
Party agents say the short text messages have been effective in mobilising people to attend campaign rallies.
The ICT manager for the NRM, Ibrahim Kaliisa, said they sent out 500,000 messages during nominations and many people turned up at Kololo airstrip, saying the president had sent them personal texts inviting them to the function.
Mr Kaliisa said the NRM intends to send out over one million text messages to its campaign agents this week and more messages to voters.
Teddy Mugote, the public relations officer for independent candidate Dr Abed Bwanika, said they were sending out at least 3,000 messages daily.
Sam Akaki of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) said the party plans to send out text messages to all people who own handsets in Uganda. According to the Uganda Communications Commission, there were about 1.4 million mobile phone subscribers by September 2005.
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