Kenya lost $27m to Telegram shutdown in 2023
Telegram, one of the most popular social media platforms in Kenya was inaccessible to users in Kenya, coinciding with the country’s college entrance examinations.
During the outage, there were speculations that the timing of Telegram’s disruption might be linked to an attempt to prevent examination malpractice, as the app was only offline during the day. At night, when exams were not taking place, it functioned normally.
According to calculations by NetBlocks, a London-based internet rights organization, the eight-day shutdown of the popular messaging platform in Kenya caused significant inconvenience to businesses relying on it, resulting in billions in losses.
Each day of Telegram’s downtime is estimated to have cost businesses and the country a total of Ksh537 million ($3.4 million) in foregone sales, wages, and economic benefits that would have emanated from the use of the application in Kenya.
Top10VPN, a UK-based internet privacy and security organization, conducted an analysis revealing that Kenya’s loss ranked as the sixteenth largest among the 25 jurisdictions that experienced internet or social media platform shutdowns last year.
Kenya faced a cost of $27 million during the 192-hour shutdown, impacting 15.6 million people.
Internet shutdown in Africa
The growing concern about internet shutdowns has taken centre stage in Africa. In 2023, Sub-Saharan Africa witnessed a financial setback of $1.74 billion during 30,785 hours of internet downtime, affecting 84.8 million people.
Globally, it was observed that 50% of government-initiated internet outages in 2023 were linked to additional human rights abuses, with restrictions on freedom of assembly being the most frequently reported violation.
In the African context, major internet shutdowns were primarily attributed to military coups and protests within the region.
