By skyforbes 
The Ugandan government and social media users have dismissed the claim as false.
This post claiming that Uganda has banned TikTok is FALSE.
The video posted on 22 June 2025 is accompanied by text reading, “TikTok has officially been banned in Uganda.”
The background choir sings “Welaba, Welaba”, as visuals of the Uganda flag and a Uganda Airlines plane are shown. Welaba, which means “goodbye” in Luganda, suggests a symbolic farewell to TikTok in Uganda.
However, the short-form video-sharing platform has not been banned in Uganda.
Obed Katureebe, the acting executive director of the Uganda Media Centre, the government’s public relations department, dismissed the claim as false in an interview with PesaCheck.
“Certainly, the claim that Uganda has banned TikTok is a big no. There has been no such ban. What we banned is Facebook, and that is common knowledge,” Katureebe said by telephone.
Furthermore, PesaCheck interviewed two TikTok users in Uganda, Juliet Nalwoga and Simon Emwamu, both of whom confirmed that they were still able to share and publish videos on the platform.
PesaCheck performed a search using the keyword “Uganda bans TikTok,” but the results did not produce any reports of the alleged ban.
In March 2025, Mufti Sheikh Shaban Mubajje, the head of Uganda’s Muslim leaders, asked the government to ban TikTok, claiming that the platform was being used to spread misinformation. However, no such ban has been effected.
PesaCheck looked into a post claiming that Uganda has banned TikTok and found it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Paul Tajuba and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya and chief copy editor Stephen Ndegwa.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape the government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.