Each day of Telegram’s inaccessibility is estimated to have cost businesses and the country a staggering Ksh537 million (US$3.4 million) in foregone sales, wages, and economic benefits tied to the application’s use
The widely used social media platform- Telegram- faced a disruption in Kenya coinciding with the country’s crucial college entrance examinations. The reasons for the disruption are still not known. Speculation is that it was carried out to prevent examination malpractice. The app remained offline only during the day, and at night when examinations are not taking place, it works uninterrupted.
This has become a debatable point among netizens as social media has been used to air their views for and against the disruption. A London-based internet rights organization, NetBlocks, revealed that the eight-day shutdown had a substantial impact on businesses in Kenya, resulting in losses amounting to billions of Kenyan Shillings. Each day of Telegram’s inaccessibility is estimated to have cost businesses and the country a staggering Ksh537 million (US$3.4 million) in foregone sales, wages, and economic benefits tied to the application’s use.
A study by UK-based internet privacy and security organization, Top10VPN, shed light on the global scale of such disruptions. Kenya’s loss during the 192-hour Telegram shutdown ranked as the sixteenth largest among the 25 jurisdictions that experienced internet or social media platform shutdowns in the previous year. The cost to the country amounted to US$27 million, impacting 15.6 million people.
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The incident in Kenya reflects a growing concern about internet shutdowns across Africa. In 2023, Sub-Saharan Africa faced a substantial financial setback of US $1.74 billion during 30,785 hours of internet downtime, affecting a staggering 84.8 million people, as per research by Top10VPN.
Globally, a concerning trend emerged, revealing that 50% of government-initiated internet outages in 2023 were linked to additional human rights abuses, with restrictions on freedom of assembly being the most frequently reported violation. In the African context, major internet shutdowns were predominantly attributed to military coups and protests within the region.
