Christmas is over, it’s less than a week to the end of the year and we are looking back at 2018. There have been memorable moments and those that we wish we could forget but in the world of tech, it has generally been a year of great discoveries and some awesome trends. Out of a pool of several moments, I picked out 5 that I felt were the most outstanding for Uganda and here they are.
1. Modern Banking
This year has seen the development of the banking sector at a rate unseen before. After mobile money eating into the banking sector, the banks adopted the same technology and created agent banking which has grown by leaps and bounds this year. More banks have adopted agent banking and have brought the banks much closer to the people.
Mobile money services haven’t been sleeping either. MTN has led the charge in this respect incorporating Momo pay with MasterCard and making it possible to pay for streaming services with your phone, including the non smart ones.
2. E Commerce
The buying and selling of items on the internet saw a surge in 2018. Despite Kilimall closing shop in Uganda the likes of Jumia made the most of the space left by their competitors. In 2018 jumia.ug became the most visited site in the country and pulled off a successful Black Friday sale which went on for more than a week. E Commerce has never been so appealing as it has been this year.
3. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence or AI as it is commonly known saw better days in 2018. While many end users of tech might not have been aware of it, AI has been a major part of this year’s tech products including voice assistants, smartphones and cameras. If you purchased a smartphone this year, chances are high it has some form of AI supporting the camera, battery usage and other phone functions. It doesn’t even matter whether or not it’s a flagship phone because the budget phone makers like Infinix and Tecno have made a good use of AI to perfect things like beauty mode in the camera, portrait photos, and that very effective long lasting battery life.
4. Voice Assistants
If you are an iPhone user, you know Siri. If you’re on Android, you have Google Assistant. Even if you have not used either of them, they are present on your phone and have been refined throughout this year to make them better than ever before. This voice recognition technology combined with an AI assistant have been used a lot this year to make execution of tasks better and faster. Google provided half a dozen voices for their assistant, made it more conversational and most importantly made it available on every device all you have to say is “Ok Google”
5. Social Media Marketing
This is no new concept but in Uganda this form of marketing has expanded to become the most sought after marketing service by both large and small companies. This year has seen a growth in number of influencers and and increase in the number of people offering professional services of social media and digital marketing. This is one trend that is only going to go up even in the next year.
Also read: Uganda tech trends going to make headlines in 2019
Honourable mentions
OTT
2018 is also the year of OTT. That tax levied by the government on social Media. It is not the best of trends but the Ugandan government decided to put a cap on the freedom of communication and expression and charged UGX 200 a day for citizens to access social media platforms much to surprise of Ugandans and the world.
The VPN
As a result of the infamous OTT VPNs became a major part of the life of Ugandans who were not ready to pay a social media tax and there have been more downloads of VPN apps in Uganda this year than any other year.
Elit 
Nice stuff here, felt like hanging around for a while. OTT was also a blessing in disguise for content creators and bloggers, look at that too.
Otherwise, nice thoughts. Keep it up Daniel.
Thanks Martin for the feedback and that suggestion. I will definitely look into it. Keep reading 😀