Ioda south africa software#

In some African countries like Ethiopia or Eritrea the government controls 100 percent of the internet’s infrastructure and runs the only state-owned provider giving them direct access to ISP operations. In order to restrict access to the internet, governments rely on internet service providers (ISP) for technical implementation of the shutdown.

Third, not all governments may have the capacity to easily implement a shutdown. Campaigns like #KeepItOn or Article19 publicly shame governments and raise awareness for the consequences of internet shutdowns and their violations of freedom to expression. Second, there is increasing international pressure by civil society and human rights organizations. Niger’s three-day long shutdown in January 2016 in response to popular protest, for example, supposedly amounted in economic losses of more than 1.2 million USD. Several organizations, like the Brookings Institute, have sought to quantify economic damage caused by internet shutdowns. Several reasons might keep incumbents from blocking internet access.įirst, the economic damage resulting from internet shutdowns affects an entire country’s economy. For example, only one third of all African national elections were accompanied by (partial) blocking of internet access. Internet shutdown in Cameroon 2019 ( IODA )ĭespite the increasing trend among many African rulers to shut down the internet, some governments refrain from blocking access. Social Media blocking in Togo 2020 ( OONI) This doesn’t sole the problem, however, because OONI relies on self-reporting and so data is still scarce for some countries, especially in Africa. OONI data provide in-depth information about which services are blocked by which providers.

Ioda south africa software#

Software by the Open Observatory of Network Interference ( OONI) provides data crowdsourced by individuals who run the OONI app on their smart phone. However, the available datasets are usually large, as measurements are run multiple times per day, and are thus difficult to process, aggregate, and interpret without IT expertise.

The platform IODA provides fine-grained information about internet shutdowns including information about different providers involved as well as timing. This does not only impede scholarly attempts to study internet shutdowns across countries and over time, but also blurs the involvement of different actors and eventually makes it more difficult to hold them accountable.Ĭomputer scientists have started to analyse large-scale internet traffic in order to develop unbiased measures of internet disruptions. Anecdotal evidence from media reports or self-reported information might suffer from biases and usually lacks more detailed information on the geographic scope, companies involved, and techniques used to block internet access.

Yet we still know far too little about the actual societal and political impacts of internet shutdowns.įor social scientists the challenge already begins with measuring internet disruptions. This trend is accompanied by growing media and civil society attention pointing to potential consequences of internet shutdowns for the economy, authoritarianism, or individual lives, amongst others. Shutdowns appear to have become the new normal and governments that refrain from using them are applauded when they announce to stay connected. Similarly, in Zimbabwe in January 2019, the government blocked internet access in response to increasing protest against rising fuel prices in the country. In spring 2019, for instance, the Sudanese government blocked access to mobile internet altogether amid increasing anti-government protests in Khartoum. These shutdowns usually occur during times of political contestation, such as violent protest or elections. The term internet shutdown has been widely used to describe different phenomena of internet manipulation, ranging from throttling of internet speed, over blocking of specific web content such as Facebook or Twitter, to banning internet access altogether. In 2019, at least 10 African countries blocked access to the internet, constituting a growing trend of digital repression, especially in less democratic regimes. Internet shutdowns in Africa have become the new normal.