Every agency pitch this year leans digital-first. The newest Ipsos NAMS numbers tell a more complicated story — one where radio still reaches more Ugandans than any other medium, and social media’s real strength is narrower and more specific than the hype suggests.
If you’ve sat through a media strategy pitch in Kampala this year, you’ve likely heard some version of the same pitch: “Shift more budget to digital, because that’s where the audience is going,” they say. The newest Ipsos NAMS Wave 3 2026 data, released in recent weeks, tells a more precise and considerably less convenient story for that argument.
The Real Numbers
Radio’s past-7-day reach nationally sits at 82%, still the single most dominant medium in the country, and not by a small margin. Television reaches 44% of Ugandans in the same window. Social media reaches 33%, and instant messaging apps (WhatsApp and similar) sit just ahead of social media at 34%. Newspapers, by contrast, reach just 9% — a genuinely niche medium now, not a mass one.
That gap between radio and social media (82% vs 33%) is the number every “digital-first” pitch deck should have to reckon with before it recommends a full budget shift.
| Medium | National | Urban | Rural | Notable split |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radio | 82% | 73% | 88% | Strong nationwide — the only medium with no weak region |
| Television | 44% | 56% | 36% | Central region 66% vs Northern 27% |
| Instant Messaging | 34% | — | — | No urban/rural split reported |
| Social Media | 33% | 45% | 25% | Peaks at 42% (ages 18–29), falls to 9% at 55+ |
| Newspapers | 9% | — | — | 24% among wealthiest tier, 5% among poorest |
Reach Isn’t Evenly Distributed — That’s the Real Story
The national averages hide the more useful insight: that each medium’s strength is geographically and demographically specific.
Radio is genuinely universal. It reaches 88% of rural Uganda and 73% of urban Uganda — meaningfully strong in both — and the only medium that can credibly claim to be “the voice” outside the cities. For a campaign that needs true national reach, nothing else in the current data comes close.
Television seems to still be an urban and Central-region phenomenon. Nationally it reaches 44%, but that splits sharply (56% urban vs just 36% rural). Regionally, the reach gap is still 66% in the Central region against 31% in the Eastern region, 27% in the Northern region, and 42% in the Western region. TV doesn’t rule the nation. It rules the city — and specifically the capital region.
Social media’s strength is real, but narrow. It skews heavily urban (45% vs 25% rural) and heavily among young audiences — reach peaks at 42% among both the 18–24 and 25–29 segments, and falls to just 9% among Ugandans 55 and older.
Even within the youngest segment measured (18–24), radio still reaches 77% of them — nearly double social media’s 42%.
Ipsos NAMS Wave 3 2026
Newspapers have become an elite-access medium, not a mass one. At 9% overall reach, readership climbs to 24% among the wealthiest tier and as low as 5% among the lowest. This is now a channel for reaching decision-makers and high-net-worth audiences deliberately, not for building broad awareness.
Why This Isn’t Just About Preference
These patterns aren’t purely cultural — they’re structural. Roughly a third of Ugandans own a smartphone, meaning the constraint isn’t universal device access, it’s a mix of affordability, data costs, and electricity reliability. TV penetration by wealth tier makes this concrete: it rises from 23% among the lowest standard-of-living bracket to 77% among the highest, aligning almost exactly with electricity access, which rises from near-zero in the poorest bracket to 96% in the wealthiest two. A “digital-first” strategy implicitly assumes infrastructure most of the country doesn’t yet have. That’s not a preference gap. It’s an access gap — and it will close on its own timeline, not a media planner’s.
The Strategic Implication
None of this argues against digital spend. It argues against blanket, category-wide digital spend as a default. The data supports a genuinely segmented strategy: radio for true national reach, especially anything targeting rural markets or requiring broad, repeated frequency; TV for urban and Central-region campaigns aimed at aspirational or higher-income audiences; social and messaging platforms for precisely targeting the urban under-35 segment where they do, in fact, dominate; and newspapers as a deliberate, narrow tool for reaching an elite, high-value audience rather than an obsolete channel to be abandoned.
Treating any one of these as the default and the others as legacy spend isn’t a strategy. It’s an assumption dressed up as one.
The 3-Question Channel-Fit Test
Before shifting budget toward or away from any medium, run the decision through three questions:
Is your target audience really urban-under-35?
Or did your team assume that because your team is? Agency staff skew young and urban. Client audiences often don’t. Check the assumption against the data, not the room.
Does this need mass reach, or a narrow audience?
If the goal is genuine national awareness, radio’s 82% reach — and especially its 88% rural reach — is difficult to replace. If the goal is a narrow, high-value, urban audience, digital and print both earn their place.
Are you buying credibility your data doesn’t require?
A digital-first media plan can be the right call. It can also be a way of looking current rather than being effective. The NAMS numbers are specific enough now — there’s no excuse for not checking which one you’re actually doing.