About Lineserve in Uganda
ug-1a is live in Kampala. Here is what stands behind it.
Trust in infrastructure is assembled out of things a buyer can check without taking anyone's word for them. Where the machine is. Which country's law the records sit under. What currency the bill arrives in. What the uptime commitment pays when it is missed. In Uganda the answers are short: your instances run in ug-1a, in Kampala; your data is held in Uganda, which gives you data residency for Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act; you are quoted and invoiced in Uganda Shillings and you settle with MTN Mobile Money, Airtel Money, a bank transfer or a card. The company you contract with is LINESERVE, INC., which runs ug-1a alongside Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Lagos — one account, one API, one bill. Every sentence there can be tested from a laptop in Kampala before you spend a shilling.
Why we exist
The cloud was never built with us in mind
For years, running a serious application in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam or Lagos meant renting infrastructure somewhere else. Your servers sat an ocean away. Your users waited on every round trip. Your invoices arrived in a foreign currency, and your support requests joined a queue in a timezone that wasn't yours.
That's not a small inconvenience — it's a tax on everyone trying to build here. Higher latency, forex friction, and data that lives under someone else's jurisdiction. The global clouds treat this continent as a distant edge region, if they serve it at all.
Lineserve exists to invert that. We put the infrastructure where the users are, bill in the currency businesses actually use, keep data on the continent, and answer support in the hours people are awake. Not a foreign cloud with a local label — infrastructure that's genuinely, physically local.
What is in Kampala
What “in Uganda” means, and what runs there
Uganda has no coastline, and that shapes every hosting decision made here. Nothing lands; everything is carried. International capacity reaches Kampala over terrestrial fibre — inland from the Mombasa cable stations across Kenya, or north from Dar es Salaam across Tanzania — roughly a thousand kilometres of ground before a packet has even reached the sea. A Ugandan application hosted in Europe buys that haul on the way out and again on the way back, with an ocean in the middle, on every request it makes.
ug-1a removes the whole journey for anyone in the country. Compute, storage and the region's network endpoint sit in Kampala, which is Uganda's commercial and political capital at once — no second city to argue about, and no inland leg from a port. Upcountry users in Gulu, Mbarara, Mbale, Jinja, Arua and Hoima reach it over the national backbone rather than over an international path: UCC put the country's fibre optic network at 80,257 kilometres in June 2026, up from 71,740 three months earlier, alongside 5,663 telecom towers.
Your users are overwhelmingly on a handset. UCC counted 64.6 million registered mobile subscriptions and 49 million active ones in the quarter to June 2026, with 19.7 million active mobile internet subscriptions and 20.5 million smartphones connected. Two operators — MTN Uganda and Airtel Uganda — hold more than nine in ten Ugandan lines between them, and no Ugandan audience avoids both. That is the case for a Kampala region: not a favoured-carrier arrangement, but an origin domestic to both at once.
What runs on top is deliberately unlayered. Cloud servers and VPS on Linux or Windows, dedicated servers, S3-compatible object storage on the ug-1a.s3.lineserve.net endpoint, and colocation quoted per footprint — with NVMe storage, a dedicated IPv4 and a free /64 IPv6 on every instance, always-on DDoS mitigation, snapshots and scheduled backups, private networking and a full API and CLI, behind a published 99.9% uptime SLA with service credits. Linux plans start at UGX 81,750 a month and resize to 32 vCPU and 64 GB without a change of provider.
49M
Active mobile subscriptions in Uganda (UCC, Q2 2026)
80,257 km
National fibre optic network (UCC, June 2026)
37.8M
Active mobile money users (UCC, Q2 2026)
99.9%
Uptime SLA, with service credits
Settle it from a Kampala connection
Traceroute a ug-1a address from your own MTN or Airtel connection and watch where the path terminates, then run it again from outside Uganda and compare the two. Look the address up and see which networks announce it. Then put the same question to everything else you are quoted: which city is the machine in, and will the provider name it?
What we believe
The principles behind the platform
Local-first, by design
Latency, billing, support, and data residency built for this region from the ground up — not bolted on to a foreign platform.
Global standards, no compromise
Tier III facilities, real redundancy, and open, standard tooling. Local doesn't mean lesser.
We only claim what we can back
No inflated badges, no borrowed logos, no fabricated numbers. If we say it, it's true and we can prove it.
No lock-in
S3-compatible storage, standard APIs, open images. Your stack is yours; you can leave whenever you want.
Sovereignty matters
Your data belongs on the continent, under jurisdiction you understand. We help keep it there.
On the ground
Real hardware, in real facilities, today
This isn't a roadmap. It's infrastructure that's live and serving production workloads across the region.
3 live regions
Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Lagos, with more zones in progress.
Tier III facilities
Carrier-neutral data centres with redundant power and cooling.
Enterprise hardware
Owned servers in-facility, not resold slivers of someone else's cloud.
A full stack
Cloud servers, dedicated servers, object storage, and colocation, from one provider.
99.9% uptime SLA
On every service, backed by service credits.
Local billing
KES, TZS, and NGN, with M-Pesa and local payment methods.
Leadership
Founder-led and engineering-first
Lineserve is built by engineers who use what they ship. The people making decisions about your infrastructure are the same people who rack the hardware, write the control plane, and answer the hard support tickets.
Talk to an engineer
Not a first-line script
- Kenya+254 119 039 063
- Tanzania+255 761 847 121
- Sales[email protected]
What's next
More regions, more of the stack, same principles
We're expanding zone by zone across the continent, deepening the platform with managed services, and holding to the same rule as day one: put the infrastructure where the users are, and only ship what's genuinely ready.
The company
Lineserve, formally
Plain factual details for credibility and due diligence — the kind of thing enterprise and public-sector buyers look for.
- Lineserve Cloud is operated by LINESERVE, INC., registered at 1111B S Governors Ave, STE 24432, Dover 19904, United States, together with its regional operating entities.
- Kenya: Lineserve Limited, a Kenyan-registered company and our Kenyan operating entity, at Utalii Lane, View Park Towers, Nairobi 00100. Registered for VAT in Kenya, and reachable on +254 119 039 063.
- Tanzania: the tz-1a region in Dar es Salaam, operated by LINESERVE, INC.. Billed in TZS, with a Tanzanian line on +255 761 847 121.
- Nigeria: the ng-1a region in Lagos, operated by LINESERVE, INC., billed in NGN.
- Registered contact: [email protected]
Build on infrastructure that's on your side
Local, standards-grade, and honest about what it can do. Start in minutes, or talk to the people who built it.
Currency, tax & invoicing
The shilling side of a Ugandan purchase
You are quoted in Uganda Shillings and invoiced in Uganda Shillings. Ugandan budgets are written in shillings, so an infrastructure line that holds still through the year is worth more than a dollar discount that moves under it. The figure approved in one quarter is the figure that appears in the next, with no exchange-rate assumption buried underneath it.
Uganda's standard VAT rate is 18%, administered by the Uganda Revenue Authority, and there is unusually little to argue about here: URA's published list of taxable electronic services opens with web hosting. The VAT registration threshold is UGX 150 million of annual taxable turnover. Displayed prices exclude VAT, so what goes into your forecast is the infrastructure figure and the tax sits on its own line where your accountant expects it.
The document itself matters more in Uganda than in most markets, because URA runs real-time e-invoicing through EFRIS and information technology and communications is one of the twelve designated sectors inside it. A Ugandan finance office works to a regime where an invoice carries a Fiscal Document Number, a verification code and a QR code and identifies the buyer by TIN. Tell [email protected] what your finance function needs on the document before you order, rather than after the first billing run.
Send the details before the first billing run
Your TIN, your registered name exactly as URA holds it, and any purchase-order reference, to [email protected]. Details supplied at the start appear on the document from the first run; details supplied in March become a reissue request. If the spend is approved annually, ask about annual billing in the same message — ten months for twelve.
Withholding, for the CFO who asks first
Uganda taxes international payments to non-residents at 15% of the gross under the Income Tax Act, subject to treaty relief, and since 1 July 2025 a 15% final withholding tax has applied to non-residents' income from digital services supplied to users in Uganda. Place that against your own facts with your tax adviser, and ask [email protected] for the supplier details it needs before your first payment run.
Prices exclude VAT. Colocation and larger dedicated deployments are quoted rather than sold from a price list — send the requirement to [email protected].
Data protection
Whose law your records sit under
The Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 — now Chapter 97 of the Laws of Uganda — commenced in May 2019, with the Data Protection and Privacy Regulations following in March 2021. The regulator is the Personal Data Protection Office, which sits within NITA-U and has been operational since August 2021. Section 29 requires every data collector, processor and controller to register, a year at a time, and failure to register is an offence rather than an oversight.
What makes Uganda different from its neighbours is reach. The duty is written to bind entities in Uganda and entities outside Uganda that process the personal data of Ugandan citizens, and in July 2025 the Office applied it to a global technology company with no Ugandan establishment — finding it in breach both for failing to register and for failing to evidence a lawful basis for taking complainants' data out of the country, and ordering it to register inside thirty days.
Section 19 is the clause that decides where a Ugandan workload lives. Personal data leaves Uganda only where the destination country's protection is at least equivalent to the Act's, or where the data subject has consented, and onward transfers need consent too. Uganda asks for no per-transfer permit; what it asks for is a standing record of the legal basis, the safeguards and the justification for every export, produced on demand during an audit. Hold the data in ug-1a and that file stays empty, because the records never left Kampala.
Residency is what the region supplies
The location of the data is the input we provide. Registration with the Office, your lawful basis, your notices, your breach reporting under section 23 and whatever your supervisor requires remain yours wherever the disks spin. Penalties under the Act reach 2% of annual gross turnover for a corporation — a fair measure of how firmly the question gets asked in a Ugandan due-diligence pack.
A second region is a decision, not a default
Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Lagos are one API call away and good places for a standby or a backup target. Make the call deliberately where personal data is involved: a copy of Ugandan personal data in ke-1a, tz-1a or ng-1a is a transfer out of Uganda and belongs in the section 19 record above. Machine images, static assets and logs without personal data raise none of it.
Who buys here
The Ugandan teams this was built around
Almost nobody chooses a region for its own sake. Each of these arrived at Kampala through a different door, and the door is the interesting part.
Mobile money and fintech
Uganda's anchor sector, and the one with the most Ugandan shape to it. Collections and disbursement endpoints have to take callbacks from two operators rather than one, reconcile against two wallet providers at month end, and answer a USSD session started on a phone with no browser on it. All of that traffic originates in Uganda.
SACCOs, microfinance and Tier 4 lenders
Bank of Uganda supervises the upper tiers; the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority licenses Tier 4 — SACCOs, non-deposit-taking institutions, community lenders and moneylenders. A broad sector of small institutions running real core banking, member portals and month-end runs, on data that is Ugandan personal data end to end.
NGOs, donor programmes and regional offices
Kampala carries a heavy concentration of country and regional programme offices, and the NGO Bureau has itself reminded organisations that they must register under the Data Protection and Privacy Act. A beneficiary registry is exactly the record section 19 was written about, and the grant year is what decides when it gets bought.
Oil, gas and the Albertine contractors
The buyers are not the international operators, who host globally. They are the Ugandan service contractors, logistics firms, HSE consultancies and local-content suppliers working out of Hoima, Buliisa and Kikuube with head offices in Kampala, pushing site data up thin links to something reachable from both ends.
ISPs, telcos and network operators
Two large mobile networks, a set of enterprise carriers and wholesalers, a research and education network behind the universities, and a state backbone operator. Their own systems — authentication, resolvers, billing, monitoring — are services to Ugandan networks measured by Ugandan users. This buyer reads a traceroute before a paragraph.
Agencies, ISVs and the .ug long tail
Kampala's agency and freelance developer scene is where most Ugandan business sites end up pointed, and the hubs around it keep feeding the pipeline. One buyer, many client sites, bought every quarter and grown by adding instances — which makes a shilling cost per client worth more than any single feature.
Due diligence
Everything on this page can be checked in an afternoon
Test the network yourself
Run the tests before the money moves. Traceroute a ug-1a address from a Ugandan connection and see where the path ends, then repeat from outside the country and compare. Read status.lineserve.net for what has actually happened in the region rather than what is promised about it. Ask what the 99.9% SLA pays when it is missed and who claims it — then put every one of those questions to whatever you are comparing against.
Test the paperwork
LINESERVE, INC. is the entity you contract with, ug-1a is the region you buy, and the Uganda Shilling is the currency both ends of that arrangement speak. Ask for a sample invoice before you order and hand it to whoever files your returns, and for the SLA terms in writing while you are still choosing. If your procurement pack has a supplier questionnaire, send it early — those answers are worth more on your own paper than on ours.
That is an afternoon of work and it is the cheapest afternoon in the project. [email protected] for anything this page has not answered.
FAQ
Questions, answered
LINESERVE, INC. — the company that operates ug-1a in Kampala, along with ke-1a in Nairobi, tz-1a in Dar es Salaam and ng-1a in Lagos. Your servers are in Kampala, your billing is in Uganda Shillings, and [email protected] is the commercial address.
In ug-1a, in Kampala: compute, storage and the region's network endpoint are all in the city, and an instance stays there unless you move it. Four regions are live — Kampala, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Lagos — on one account, one API and one bill.
UGX, with MTN Mobile Money, Airtel Money, bank transfer or card. Prices can be viewed in several currencies, but a Ugandan customer is quoted and invoiced in shillings, so the figure approved is the figure billed and no foreign card or forex conversion is required.
Uganda's standard VAT rate is 18%, administered by the Uganda Revenue Authority, whose published list of taxable electronic services names web hosting explicitly. Displayed prices exclude VAT. Send any requirement your finance team has for the document to [email protected] before you order.
Your TIN and your registered name exactly as URA holds them, a purchase-order reference if your system uses one, the service and the period, the taxable value and the VAT on its own line. Send those details to [email protected] before you order so the first invoice is right rather than reissued.
Yes. Data in ug-1a is held in Kampala and is not moved out of the country without your instruction, which gives you data residency for Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act. A copy you choose to make in ke-1a, tz-1a or ng-1a is a transfer out of Uganda, and section 19 applies to it.
It settles one input — where the personal data physically lives — and keeps the section 19 cross-border record out of your architecture. Everything else stays yours: registration with the Personal Data Protection Office, your lawful basis, your notices and your breach reporting under section 23.
A published 99.9% uptime commitment on every service, backed by service credits. Ask [email protected] for the terms and the claim process in writing before you order — the remedy and who has to claim it matter more than the number, and that is a question worth putting to every provider you are considering.
Check status.lineserve.net first: a region-wide event is posted there before a reply could reach you. Then open a ticket signed in, so it arrives with your account, region and instance attached. Meanwhile the fastest fixes need nobody — restore a snapshot, roll back to a scheduled backup, or use the browser console when SSH is what has broken.
[email protected] before the order; [email protected] for invoices and payments; [email protected] for reselling and technology partnerships; [email protected] and [email protected] for anything urgent about the network. Uganda is on East Africa Time, UTC+3, with no daylight saving.