Grace Ashiru
Following last week’s demonstrations, Kenya has erupted in protest this week against a new finance bill perceived as worsening economic hardship.
These demonstrations, which have resulted in at least 13 fatalities according to Reuters, as police opened fire on protestors on Tuesday, were accompanied by a nationwide internet disruption. Additionally, a human rights group documented alleged abductions of protestors.
Amid this turmoil, Kenya’s leading telecommunications giant Safaricom finds itself at the center of a firestorm of accusations following service outages and disappearances.
The recent internet disruptions in Kenya have significantly affected the country, with neighboring nations also experiencing similar issues. While the Kenyan government has denied any involvement in the matter, NetBlocks, an internet rights watchdog, has highlighted the suspicious timing of the outage, which coincided with ongoing protests. According to NetBlocks, the disruption’s severity surpassed that of typical subsea cable cuts, suggesting the possibility of “unscheduled maintenance.”
“The outage occurred just as protesters were attempting to storm parliament,” stated Isik Mater, Director of Research at NetBlocks, in a statement to TechCrunch.
Social media buzzed with allegations that Safaricom, Kenya’s leading telecommunications company, was collaborating with the government to suppress dissent. The Kenyan government, holding approximately a 35% stake in Safaricom, has frequently been criticized for supporting the telco’s monopolistic position through state patronage.
Safaricom, which dominates the Kenyan market with its telecommunications and mobile money services, denies these accusations, insisting that infrastructure issues are to blame for the disruptions.
“We have experienced an outage on two of our undersea cables that deliver internet traffic in and out of the country,” the company announced in a statement. “We have activated redundancy measures to minimize service interruption and keep you connected as we await the full restoration of the cables.”
Subsequently, in a video statement on Wednesday, June 26, Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa explained that the internet disruption affecting many users on Tuesday was due to reduced bandwidth, impacting not only Safaricom but the entire industry. He also mentioned that Safaricom had presented its views on the contentious Finance Bill 2024 and expressed condolences for those who died in the protests.
Kenyans who took to X (formerly Twitter) to blame Safaricom for the internet disruptions often supported their claims by noting that users of rival network Airtel Kenya were unaffected. However, Airtel Kenya later confirmed that it had also been impacted.
“We are experiencing data service intermittency due to an undersea cable outage affecting internet traffic,” reads a statement posted on Airtel Kenya’s official X account. “Our technical teams are working to resolve this on priority. Kindly bear with us as we seek to restore services.”
The accusations against Safaricom extended beyond the internet disruption. Human rights group Amnesty International condemned the reported abductions of at least 12 individuals who had been vocal in promoting the protest on social media platforms. The group labeled these incidents as “enforced disappearances,” a violation of Kenyan law. Kenyans online alleged that Safaricom was complicit, providing user data that facilitated the abductions.
Kenyans are claiming on social media that the country’s dominant telco “aided the abductions by providing comms data and real-time locations,” while urging a boycott. Safaricom vehemently denied these claims, stating they “adhere strictly to the country’s data protection laws” and require a court order to share customer data.
Safaricom maintained its stance on data privacy. “We have not received any court order requiring us to share customer information with any government agency,” a company statement asserted.
The underlying cause of the unrest lies in the controversial finance bill. Kenyans, burdened by high living costs and national debt, saw the bill’s proposed tax hikes as exacerbating their hardship.
Protestors, using platforms like TikTok and X, voiced their concerns about the economic situation, corruption, and perceived lack of government accountability. The protests spilled onto the streets last week and have continued since.
The violent crackdown on protestors has further inflamed tensions. “We urge the government to immediately cease these unlawful practices and release all individuals who have been arbitrarily detained,” implored the Police Reforms Working Group Kenya (PRWG-K) in a statement.
Although parliament greenlit the bill during yesterday’s tense session, news has just broken on Wednesday, June 26, that President William Ruto has declined to sign the Finance Bill 2024, and the bill is to be sent back to Parliament before they break for recess today.
Safaricom, a vital part of Kenya’s digital infrastructure, now finds itself entangled in a web of distrust. The company faces a delicate balancing act: navigating government regulations while maintaining the trust of its customers.
The coming days will be crucial, with Kenyans demanding transparency and accountability from both the government and the telecom player while navigating a fractured relationship.
