Internet shutdowns in Africa on upward trajectory
A comparative analysis of internet shutdowns in African countries highlights how the tactic is increasingly used to repress dissent and political opposition, depriving millions of people and businesses access to vital digital tools that sustain their social, economic and political life
More than 190 internet shutdowns have been recorded in 41 African countries since 2016, the African Digital Rights Network (ADRN) has found, as governments across the continent seek to normalise the use of digital blackouts to suppress dissent, quell protests and influence elections.
According to an analysis of shutdowns in 11 different African countries by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the African Digital Rights Network (ADRN), each internet blackout deprives millions of citizens and businesses of access to information and communication tools that are essential to their social, economic and political life.
The ADRN’s analysis – which investigated shutdown practices in countries including Algeria, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan – noted the tactic is often driven by the authorities’ desire to crack down on peaceful protests and political opposition, allowing the states involved to “reinforce authoritarian control” across their jurisdictions.
In Ethiopia, for example, shutting down the internet has become a “go-to” tactic for the government, which has implemented 30 separate shutdowns since 2016, “designed to curtail political discourse and participation, and to conceal atrocities and human rights violations” carried out during recent armed conflicts.
Similarly, in Sudan, which has experienced 21 shutdowns in the same time, authorities have usually employed various internet blackout tactics during protest and conflict situations.
“Across Africa, governments are normalising the use of internet shutdowns to suppress dissent, quell protests and manipulate electoral outcomes. These blackouts are growing in scale and frequency, with devastating consequences for rights and lives, in an ever-more digitally connected world,” said Felicia Anthonio, an expert on internet shutdowns and co-editor of the analysis, which has been compiled into a book.
“The international community must urgently support civil society efforts against this alarming trend, hold governments accountable, and compel telecom companies to deny unlawful or arbitrary shutdown orders,” added Anthonio.
Tony Roberts, a research fellow at IDS and co-editor of the analysis, said that as the internet increasingly becomes the medium people go to for communication, study and work, “it should worry us that regimes are imposing these digital authoritarian practices with increasing frequency and with impunity”.
In terms of the techniques used by governments to implement internet shutdowns, ADRN said this could include turning off power grids that supply electricity to communications infrastructure, manipulating internet traffic routing to disrupt specific parts of a network, using deep packet inspections (DPI) in ways that enable them to block certain services, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and throttling data flows.
The ADRN added that many of these techniques require close involvement of private companies, which own most of the digital infrastructure that the governments want to target.
“When African leaders impose internet shutdowns, they need private mobile phone companies and telecoms companies to implement the shutdown. Although those private companies have a pecuniary interest in keeping the internet on, and an obligation to protect and promote human rights law, the government’s power interest prevails,” said the analysis.
“This is because it is the government that licenses mobile and internet companies to operate. The state is able to exert ‘power over’ the companies, forcing them to implement internet shutdowns despite it otherwise being in the companies’ self-interest to resist the orders.”
Colonial roots
The research also traced the “colonial roots” of internet shutdowns, drawing links between restrictions historically imposed on “traditional media” by imperial powers to suppress burgeoning liberation movements, and those later imposed by post-colonial governments to repress the emergence of political opposition.
“By providing a history of media shutdowns … authors demonstrate that internet shutdowns are only the latest instance of a long-established political phenomenon of elites to retain power,” said the analysis, adding that of the countries investigated, shutdowns are most often imposed during protests and elections, times when the threat of growing opposition power is more pronounced.
However, it was clear that despite the historical continuities here, internet shutdowns have a much deeper effect on people’s fundamental rights than closing a newspaper or preventing TV broadcasts, as the internet (and social media specifically) allows users to rapidly disseminate information themselves to global audiences at low costs.
“Worried about these developments, especially after the so-called Facebook revolution in Egypt, authoritarian governments became keen to have power over this new channel of online assembly and free expression,” it said.
Despite the ability of governments – in collaboration with the private owners of the digital infrastructure – to disrupt mobile and internet communications when it suits their interests, citizens of the countries have not been passive in the face of it.
Highlighting their “creative agency”, researchers noted how “citizens across Africa are proving themselves able to deploy their own technologies to detect, circumvent, evade and escape internet shutdowns”, and are engaging in various collective actions to challenge them, including “strategic litigations”, advocacy and building up the strength of civil society organisations.
Roberts said: “It’s important to research further in understanding this evolving landscape of resistance, power imbalances, political motivations and authoritarian tendencies to guide future action to mitigate the harms of internet shutdowns and prevent them from reoccurring.”
In October 2021, the ADRN and IDS published a similar comparative study looking at how the governments of Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Sudan are using and investing in new digital technologies to carry out illegal surveillance on citizens.
It argued that existing privacy laws are failing to protect citizens in these countries from illegal digital surveillance, which is being facilitated and enabled by global tech companies, and “carried out with impunity” by the governments involved.
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