- Senegal’s government has shut down internet access across the country following the postponement of the Feb. 3, 2024 presidential election that sparked widespread protests.
- A statement from Moussa Bokhar Thiam, Minister of Communications, Telecommunications and Digital, said the closure was due to “a number of hateful and destructive messages relayed on social networks in the context of threatening to disrupt public order. This is due to the spread of
- This is the third internet outage the country has experienced in the past eight months.
Following this development, Tijan Deme, general partner at Partech, a global investment platform for technology and digital companies, said the closure will have far-reaching implications.
“People underestimate how much of our daily lives we rely on mobile internet,” he says.
He cited digital payments, doctors checking the source of diagnoses and prescriptions, and accountants using SaaS as some of the activities that rely on mobile internet, and that governments are trying to balance the impact of internet shutdowns. He added that it is necessary to understand.
Amnesty International’s Senegal branch also condemned the development and called on the government to “respect the freedom of the press and the people’s right to information.”
In June 2023, Senegal’s country restricted internet access in response to violent protests that began after opposition leader Ousmane Sonko was sentenced to two years in prison for “corrupting young people”. .
According to NetBlocks, the cost impact of an internet shutdown is approximately $332,502 per hour.
For the same reason, the government shut down the internet the next month.
According to a 2023 Top10vpn report, government-led internet blackouts resulted in 135 hours of power outages, 3,811 hours of social media outages, and a total cost of $57.4 million in internet restrictions in Senegal.
Sub-Saharan Africa ranked second after Europe, with losses of $1.74 billion spread over 30,785 hours and affecting 84.8 million internet users, according to the report.
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