How 3 African activists are combating internet shutdowns

Making social media safer

Many autocratic leaders see social media as a vehicle for fueling civil unrest and use it as a pretext for shutdowns. That’s why private companies such as Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among other products and services — also play an important role in tackling the root causes behind these shutdowns. 

The business model of social media companies is based on attracting and keeping a user’s attention to make them spend more time on the platform and view more ads. In light of increased criticism and backlash against users being exposed to violent and polarizing content, many platforms have invested in content moderation. 

However, the vast majority of content moderation focuses on high-income countries such as the United States, which is in a position to force companies to act. In 2020, 87% of the time allocated to training disinformation detection algorithms focused on English content, while only 9% of users were English speakers.

Just last week, a landmark legal action was submitted in Kenya’s High Court suing Meta for $1.6 billion for promoting speech that led to ethnic violence and killings in Ethiopia, by prioritizing and recommending hateful and violent content on Facebook. It also calls for the company to reform its business practices to ensure Facebook’s algorithms do not amplify hatred and fuel ethnic conflict.

Ethiopia has repeatedly shut down the internet during periods of instability — a tactic that has only intensified since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came into power in 2018. Despite a ceasefire agreement being signed between the government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front on Nov. 2, most of the Tigray region remains cut off from phone, internet, and electricity services.

The internet in the country is a highly polarized space, with misinformation and disinformation being shared by political groups from all sides, according to Atnaf Brhane, who leads the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy, a local civil society organization based in Addis Ababa. News outlets are also divided along regional and ethnic fault lines, with ethno-nationalistic media of different origins and ownership fueling polarization.

This has generated a high level of public distrust in social media, leading to widespread support for shutdowns as a way of curtailing violence and hate speech. “Even my family, my mom, supports [it] whenever there is an internet shutdown,” said Brhane. “The words 'internet' and ‘conflict’ are somehow linked together for the community. That's the major problem that we are facing.”

Internet penetration, which is currently low in Ethiopia — only around 24% of citizens are connected — is set to increase in the coming years as privatization will allow large foreign telecom providers to enter the market, which is slowly opening up. In October 2022, Kenyan company Safaricom began operating in Ethiopia. Before then, the state-owned Ethio Telecom had been the country’s sole internet provider. 

“The cost of [internet access] will become cheaper in the coming years, which is a very good thing. People in the rural areas can have access to the biggest resource in the world,” said Brhane. 

But with low levels of digital literacy, this also presents further challenges. “With this political polarization that we are facing now, if hundreds of million people get access to the internet, it's very hard to manage the outcome,” said Brhane. “It is a very diverse country, there are multiple religions, multiple ethnic groups … any hateful messages [being spread online] can lead to intercommunal violence.” 

Brhane and his team have been focusing their research and online campaigns on informing the public about how misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech affect the online space. “One of our campaigns is focused on integrating digital literacy programs in the education curriculum so that people who are going to school study how to access information and how to [safely] disseminate information online,” said Brhane.

Tech companies have a role to play, too, said Brhane. “I think the international community should push these tech platforms to focus [their content moderation activities] on countries with low digital literacy rates,” he said.

The current Sudanese military regime’s tactic of blocking internet access during periods of civil unrest — and during school exams — continues a long legacy of internet censorship and surveillance in the country. 

Since the start of the Sudanese revolution in 2018 and the overthrow of authoritarian ruler Omar al-Bashir following decades in power, authorities have periodically restricted access to social media and mobile data. But following the 2021 military coup, complete internet blackouts have become more common.

Satellite internet is the only way of overcoming such total shutdowns according to Hamad — but acquiring the equipment needed poses another big challenge. “We tried to use VSAT [a two-way ground station that transmits and receives data from satellites] because it's out of the scope of government control,” he explained. “But the problem is that to operate VSAT in Sudan you need a license from the [government] regulator.” 

Working with a group of activists, engineers, and other network experts, Hamad tried to source the equipment from outside Sudan, but high security at the airport made it dangerous to attempt to bring it into the country.

Hamad said internet service providers, or ISPs, “absolutely have a role to play” in preventing shutdowns. Three of the four main ISPs in Sudan — Zain, MTN, and Canar  — are foreign companies. “They can impact this decision if they put more pressure on the government,” said Hamad.

According to Hamad, there is no legal channel through which to prevent internet shutdowns in Sudan. “The military is controlling everything,” he said. Although the previous government established a constitutional charter that stated that every citizen must have the right to access the internet, this has not prevented the military government from deploying shutdowns. “If the constitution can’t prevent [internet shutdowns], who can?” he said. 

Hamad plans to establish an initiative bringing together experts on internet rights in Sudan to counter internet shutdown and digital authoritarianism. “I think organizing workshops and advocacy campaigns against [internet shutdowns] in collaboration with some pro-democracy groups would make a difference,” he said. 

In addition, the creation of an international statute that criminalizes internet shutdowns would help to make leaders accountable, he said.

On June 2, 2021, a tweet posted by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was taken down for violating Twitter’s rules on inciting violence. Three days later, Nigerians would discover that they could no longer access Twitter. The ban would continue for seven months.

“It came as a huge shock, that my country would wake up one day and decide to put a ban on social media,” said Rinu Oduala, a Nigerian human rights advocate.

The Twitter ban restricted social activism because many people either could not afford to pay for VPNs or did not even know how to use them, she explained. “There was a sort of fracturing in mobilization because people couldn't connect to each other. I was very angry.” Those that could use VPNs to bypass the ban were threatened with arrest by the government.

The Nigerian government had long been suspicious of social media, seeing it as one of the major tools used by young Nigerians to protest against police brutality and bad governance. “It was like they saw the internet as an enemy that they needed to conquer,” said Oduala. 

She was one of the main organizers of the #EndSARS protests against the controversial Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or SARS, that took place across the country in October 2020. Although the SARS unit was disbanded, police brutality continues to be a problem in Nigeria.

Oduala worries that the Twitter ban, which was only lifted in January 2022 after Twitter itself agreed to meet a number of conditions set by the Nigerian government, “sets a precedent that any democratic administration can just wake up one day and decide to infringe on people's rights with no consequences.”

In a victory for rights activists, in July 2022 a lawsuit brought to the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States by civil society organizations ruled that the ban was unlawful. 

However, Oduala believes the ruling doesn’t go far enough to deter future shutdowns and restrictions on social media. “I think that there could have been sanctions against the Nigerian government for this … there could have been compensation for those people whose lives were destroyed and businesses that were disrupted,” she said. The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry calculated that the ban resulted in business losses of $26 million.

With general elections fast approaching in February 2023, Oduala thinks the best way to combat future shutdowns is by building awareness about human rights, democracy, and freedom of expression. “When Twitter went off, some Nigerians were saying, well, the government can do that. They didn't actually know that the government is not allowed to do this,” she said.

One thing is clear — the African continent doesn’t lack activists who are willing to fight for and defend internet access, whether through litigation, advocacy, or simply documenting shutdowns when they happen. With Nigeria, the most populous country in the continent, hitting the polls on February 25, the world should carefully watch — and protect — the online space where it’s needed the most.