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East Africa’s Digital Blackout: Tanzania and Kenya lose $76.4m to internet censorship
In Africa, 12 countries recorded at least one incident of total or partial internet shutdown, as more states restricted social media use to control information flow.
What you need to know:
- The cost of such shutdowns is calculated by internet rights organisation NetBlocks based on indicators by the World Bank and International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which estimate, in monetary terms, the economic benefits generated in a country from uninterrupted internet and social media use.
Internet censorship cost Tanzania and Kenya $76.4 million in lost output last year, as the two governments cracked the whip on online freedoms to control information flow and dissent among citizens.
This is more than twice the losses attributed to such shutdowns in 2023, as more hours of internet shutdown were recorded in Kenya in June and November, according to data by Top10VPN, an internet privacy and security research and review organisation.
The cost of such shutdowns is calculated by internet rights organisation NetBlocks based on indicators by the World Bank and International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which estimate, in monetary terms, the economic benefits generated in a country from uninterrupted internet and social media use.
Last year, Kenya had two internet shutdowns, lasting 511 hours and impacting 22.7 million people, resulting in cumulative losses of about $75 million, more than double the $27 million it lost in 2023, according to the data.
The first was the nationwide internet outage on June 25, when youth protesting against the Finance Bill 2024 stormed parliament.
The shutdown, which was confirmed by NetBlocks, lasted about seven hours and cost the country about $4 million in lost output.
The Kenyan government again restricted access to cloud-based messaging app Telegram in November during the secondary school national examinations, for 21 days, costing about $71 million in foregone output.
Tanzania, on the other hand, did not record any case of complete internet shutdown last year, but restricted access to two key social media platforms in attempts to deal with dissent and control information flow.
The most recent was on August 20, when access to X (formerly Twitter) was restricted for about 24 hours, following alleged plans by opposition parties to raid police stations holding political prisoners. This outage cost the country an estimated $998,898.
Clubhouse, an audioconferencing platform that has been gaining traction in Tanzania since 2022 and used especially for opposition crusading, was also restricted for 45 days at the beginning of the year, resulting in economic losses estimated at $357,906.
Tanzania’s losses blamed on internet censorship, unlike Kenya’s, saw a 50 percent decline from the $2.8 million recorded in 2023 due to restriction of access to Clubhouse for most of the year.
Globally, there was a rise in the number of internet shutdowns recorded, from 140 in 2023 to 193, pointing to an increased crackdown on internet freedoms as a means of dealing with dissent.
In Africa, 12 countries recorded at least one incident of total or partial internet shutdown, as more states restricted social media use to control information flow.
The overall cost of internet shutdowns globally declined from $9.13 billion in 2023 to $7.69 billion, the lowest it has ever been since 2022, but just as much impactful on people’s lives.
“Not only do they (internet shutdowns) infringe on citizens’ digital rights but they are also catastrophic acts of national economic self-sabotage,” said Simon Migliano, lead researcher at Top10VPN.
For the past two years, East African states Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have remained off the list.
Uganda and South Sudan last restricted the internet in 2021, while Somalia, DRC and Burundi last shut down the web in 2019. Only Rwanda has not recorded a single incident of deliberate internet shutdown over the past five years.
Analysts project that Tanzania is likely to experience more internet restrictions this year as it heads into the general election, given that its previous elections witnessed shutdowns.
