Love porn? love that golden nectar of the devil? Well if your living in the east Africa , brace yourselves.
At long last, Uganda’s anti-porn “machine” has started working. As The country’s government placed is aid to have placed an order for a porn-blocking machine last year, following on the heels of yet another anti-porn law. A company in South Korea helpfully cobbled this together and the Ugandan government has deployed it.
As the Kenyans debate on the effects of pornography on the society , Uganda has taken a bold step and blocked all pornographic sites in fulfillment of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) orders.
Three of the sites providing free content ,Pornhub.com, Xvideos.com and Youporn.com – were among the top 100 most visited websites in Uganda before the ban took effect.
Dr Annette Kezaabu,the chairperson of the Pornography Control Committee,said there is a drop in the number of people accessing pornography after they blocked the prominent porn sites.
“As I speak, we have a team that is compiling a list of other porn sites that will be blocked. We anticipate that some people will open up new sites but this is a continuous process,” Dr Kezaabu said yesterday.
In July, Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) executive director Godfrey Mutabazi wrote to telecoms and ISPs ordering them to “ensure that pornographic material is not uploaded or downloaded through its services.”
This follows concerns raised by the Uganda’s Pornography Control Committee that some of the sites were carrying leaked nude videos of Ugandan celebrities and others have been dealing in escort services.
According to Ugandan newspaper the Daily Monitor, the chairperson of the Committee Dr Annette Kezaabu, there has been a drop in the number of people accessing pornography after they blocked the prominent porn sites.
The ban in Uganda follows steps by East African Community (EAC) member states to crackdown on the access to pornographic material especially to minors.
Currently there are 27 websites that cannot be accessed on mobile phones in the region.
Kenya is also mulling a similar ban.
Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) chairman George Magoha asked the government to shut down porn sites in a bid to arrest runaway teenage pregnancies.
Prof. Magoha has blamed the pregnancy crisis in schools on easy access to porn by young girls and boys.
Kenya’s ICT Minister Joe Mucheru said he had tasked the country’s telecom regulator with coming up with a way of blocking access to porn sites.
“In light of what’s going on, I have directed the Communications Authority, to immediately begin looking at how we can enforce or filter to ensure we protect our young people,” Mucheru said last week in response to Prof. Magoha’s concerns.
“We cannot take advantage of all the technology that is coming and still take some of the bad, so we need to find a ways of ensuring the bad things are left out,” he added.