June 20, 2019

Anna Murray 

Ethio Telecom stopped work for eight days and finally restored service on June 18. Near 16 million internet users failed to use the web or social media during the outages. This only mobile phone provider in Ethiopia apologized for the inconvenience and promised not to charge the subscribers during the interrupted period.

The government or Ethio Telegram didn’t make any explanation about the shutdown, and some people conjectured the shutdown was to prevent high school students from cheating on a national exam based on the past experience in 2016 and 2017—the government stopped the leak of stolen exam answers by shutting off the internet. Ethiopia’s minister of education, Tilaye Gete, denied such accusation. However, he admitted that more than 100 people were taken into custody owing to giving out stolen exam answers

Furthermore, there were such cases of shutdowns during protests and civil unrest in this democratic country. An Ethiopian blogger, Atnafu Berhane, pointed out that such government officials’ abuse of the internet was against due process. The activists in Ethiopia also slammed the situation as a public rights abuse. According to a lawyer, the internet users will sue the government and operator for the disruption, which costs the country about $4.5 million a day.

Photo:Webshot.