More Ugandans are using mobile money, but telecom companies earned less in the first three months of 2026.
New figures from the Uganda Communications Commission, using data from Bank of Uganda, show active mobile money users climbed to 36.7 million between January and March.
That’s up from 36.3 million at the end of 2025. When you include inactive accounts, total registered mobile money users jumped to 58.7 million from 53.6 million.
Even with more users, the amount of money moved on the platforms dropped slightly. Mobile money transactions totaled Shs2.37 billion in Q1 2026, down from Shs2.48 billion in Q4 2025.
The average user made two peer-to-peer transfers each month, worth about Shs100,690 per transaction.
The wider telecom industry also felt a pinch. Gross revenue fell to Shs1.60 trillion for January–March, compared to Shs1.66 trillion in the last quarter of 2025.
Analysts say two things caused this. First, people usually spend more during the festive season, so Q4 numbers are always higher. Second, internet services were disrupted and then slowly restored around the January 2026 General Elections. That slowed down data use and online business for a while.
Despite the hiccup, Ugandans kept talking and browsing. Voice calls on the same network stayed the most popular, with 20.9 billion minutes logged in Q1.
Internet use also stayed strong. Public downloads hit 256.8 million gigabytes, and the average mobile subscriber used about 3GB of data monthly.
