Global Courant
The month of June did not start well for Senegal. On Thursday, the first day of the month, several social media platforms including WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube faced access restrictions in Senegal. And it wasn’t a glitch. The next day, Antoine Diome, the Minister of the Interior, recognized the blocks, citing “the spread of hateful and subversive messages on social networks.”
But there is a backstory. On Thursday, violent protests erupted after a verdict that sentenced popular opposition leader Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison. The first allegations against him were that he raped a woman in a massage parlor in 2021 and made death threats. But the court declared him innocent of those charges. However, his imprisonment came because of accusations of ‘corrupting youths’.
Sonko denies any wrongdoing and his supporters are convinced that the prosecution is politically driven. The prison sentence could prevent him from running in February’s presidential elections. And so Sonko’s supporters, mostly young people, took to the streets. So were the protesters angry at President Macky Sall’s refusal to rule out running for a third term. Senegal has a two-term presidential limit.
By Sunday, Reuters reported that the Senegalese Minister of Communications, Telecommunications and Digital Economy issued a statement extending the outage to mobile internet data in specific areas and at specific times.
“The Ministry of Communications, Telecommunications and Digital Economy informs that due to the spread of hateful and subversive messages in a context of public disorder in certain places in the national territory, the Internet of mobile data is temporarily suspended during certain time slots . Telephone operators are obliged to comply with notified claims,” the government said in its statement.
NetBlocks, an internet observatory, analysed traffic data and confirmed the suspension of mobile internet in Senegal.
The protests have led to constant confrontations between the population and the police up to 16 people have died. An example is a Senegalese man who tweeted to Elon Musk requesting that citizens be given access to Starlink as an alternative. He was allegedly killed by security forces after that tweet.
Hi @Elon Musk And @starlink
The Senegalese government has blocked internet access for the Senegalese people. This is a violation of human rights and an attempt to silence dissent.
We urge you to use Starlink to provide Internet access to the residents of Senegal.
#FreeSenegal
— NEIGHBOR-JOIE BI (@NeighborBi1) June 2, 2023
To get around the lockdown, many people in Senegal are now using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which enable secure and encrypted connections between devices and networks. The demand for VPNs in Senegal was up more than 8,000% on Thursday compared to the daily average of the previous 30 days, with a further increase of more than 20,000% on Friday. Top10VPN admitted it was the “largest increase in VPN demand” it had ever recorded. That is why the hashtag #FreeSenegal is trending on Twitter as people use it to decry the situation.
Not the first time
Before 2021, Senegal barely made the news due to political unrest. But after the arrest of Ousmane Sonko, protests broke out in March of the same year. On the third day of these protests, the government responded with blocking the internet and suspending two TV channels for 72 hours on their coverage of the protests. The country’s National Audiovisual Regulatory Council previously warned broadcasters that broadcasting this form of content “could threaten national stability or social cohesion”. It was the same year that Senegal started the #FreeSenegal movement on social media. But now it has come to life again due to a new wave of protests.
What is Senegal losing?
As mentioned earlier, Senegal has lost at least 16 people to these protests. But that’s not the only thing they lose: the money goes down the drain. NetBlocks estimates that an internet stop costs Senegal $332,502 per hour.
Senegal is home to 10.2 million internet users, representing about 58% of the population. This was one of the reasons why it was one of Africa’s top ten countries for VC funding in 2022. But now the burgeoning digital economy is under siege. Using VPNs is costly on an enterprise scale and not everyone knows the ropes.
Using internet shutdowns to quell dissent is common in Africa and dates back to the Arab Spring of 2011, when rulers in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya tried to control the spread of information. Since then, Gabon, The Gambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and others have done the same in times of instability.
In Africa, Ethiopia suffered the largest loss ($179 million) from internet shutdowns in 2022; Nigeria follows with $82.7 million. Sudan, Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe also lost $17.8 million, $12.6 million and $1.6 million respectively. But with no proposed end in sight for Senegal’s internet shutdown, there’s no telling if it would join this competition.
