African governments learn to block the internet, but at cost
KAMPALA, Uganda — The mysterious Facebook blogger kept dishing up alleged government secrets. One day it was a shadowy faction looting cash from Uganda’s presidential palace with impunity. The next was a claim that the president was suffering from a debilitating illness.
For authorities in a country that has seen just one president since 1986, the critic who goes by Tom Voltaire Okwalinga is an example of the threat some African governments see in the exploding reach of the internet — bringing growing attempts to throttle it.
Since 2015 about a dozen African countries have had wide-ranging internet shutdowns, often during elections. Rights defenders say the blackouts are conducive to carrying out serious abuses.
The internet outages also can inflict serious damage on the economies of African countries that desperately seek growth, according to research by the Brookings Institution think-tank .