Internet shutdown costs Ethiopia millions of dollars

Smart phone users looking for wifi (Photo obtained from social media)

ESAT News (October 20, 2016)

The internet shutdown in Ethiopia will drain millions of dollars from the economy, besides undermining citizens’ rights to impart and seek information, Quartz Africa quoted observers of the current state of emergency as saying.

A recent Brookings Institution report showed that a total 30-day disruption of the internet between July 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016, cost Ethiopia’s economy over $8.5 million.

Mobile internet remains down across the country since the government announced a six-month, nationwide emergency in early October. The government also this week banned the use of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to communicate or to document the ongoing unrest in the country.

Ethiopia, the second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa, has one of the lowest rates of internet and mobile phone connectivity in the world, Quartz Africa said in the report.

“The thinking behind this blanket shutdown is to curb the spread and flow of information about the unrest” Endalk Chala, a doctoral candidate in media studies at the University of Oregon, and one of the co-founders of the Zone 9 blog in Ethiopia told Quartz Africa.

“This is a typical textbook example of repression. You shut down media, you arrest dissidents and try to use propaganda to co-opt,” Chala told Quartz.