The trend is worrying, shut downs are not new; they are just getting sophisticated by the day owing to new technologies which get better by the day.

Having worked in some parts of Northern Kenya a few years back.  I got to experience this first hand where the connection had been disrupted as a way of cutting off communication among warring villages. The intention is usually justified as "for emergency/security purposes" but then again this can also been used for political purposes. Secondly, this is never documented and most times as I came to learn from the locals, it was the norm for connection to go off during certain seasons. I further noted they could not establish whether this was a deliberate shut down or just another technical glitch as they couldn't tell the difference but the timings raised eyebrows.

If indeed deliberate, It is also not clear from which government agency the directive comes from which further raises eyebrows as such a move should be made public for accountability purposes.

Governments have not been saints in the past and we should not expect this to change overnight and I agree Ali, vigilance is key, hence the many questions behind the recent move by CA on the DMS system. Having “all Mobile Operators connect to the DMS system” a system that is run by a third party opens up many questions especially the fact that this has been done outside of the public eye and the details regarding the system have served to raise more questions than offer comfort to users. Secondly, the silence by Mobile Service Providers on the same raises more questions as there seems to be some level of discomfort otherwise they would  be defending the move already.

Fact is, the regulator calls the shots and mobile service providers must comply therefore we can only expect so much from them. The way I see it, our best shot at defending this space is in Africa is through through a standardized system of laws that apply in all member states of the African Union i.e pushing for ratification of the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection in Africa and further pushing for data protection laws locally like in Netherlands where even the government needs a court order to take down a website.

Regards,

Esther Kamande 

Advocate | Policy Analyst

Twitter: @enkamande