I first heard of the term digital apartheid in a news piece about Kashmir, and it piqued my interest. I heard it in the context of the Kashmir conflict, which is a conflict over the territory of Kashmir between India and Pakistan, mainly, but also between China and India.
From time to time, India justifies their “closure” of internet services in Kashmir by citing public safety and peace for all. Recently, I was in a women's meeting in Nairobi where I got to interact with different women from around Africa, and we started speaking about the internet and upcoming elections in Uganda and Tanzania.
It started when a Ugandan lady was so surprised that she could access Facebook without a VPN, while the Tanzanian lady was excited to access X (formerly Twitter), which is currently extremely slow or being shut down from time to time in Tanzania, with the justification that the government is curbing misinformation before their elections later this year.
Closer home, Kenya is learning the digital bad manners pretty fast from our neighbors in Tanzania and Uganda and internationally to implement a digital apartheid upon us. In Kenya, it is even more serious as we saw switching off of signals of mainstream media (KTN and NTV) this week, halting live coverage of Gen Z protests. If the trend continues, I will write about mainstream media apartheid, but let me focus on digital apartheid for now.
There have been many instances where Kenyans have complained about lack of internet or unusually slow internet speeds by nearly 40 percent. During the June 25th, 2024 Finance Bill protests, a leading telecommunication company and largest internet provider in Kenya could not provide internet for over two hours.
In their explanation to furious consumers, they attributed the lack of internet to damage to undersea cables that carry internet traffic, leading to reduced and lack of bandwidth. The explanation was quite disingenuous and unbelievable, which led to a lot of backlash, with some celebrities publicly severing ties with the company as a show of solidarity with the youth and Gen Z.
The matter is getting national attention in Kenya, so much so that it found itself in courts at the desk of Justice Bahati Mwamuye. On Wednesday, May 14, 2025, he ruled, ordering the government, the Communications Authority of Kenya, and stakeholders not to shut down the internet.
He was dealing with a matter of public interest brought to him by seven civil society organizations who filed a public interest case against the unlawful disruption of internet access in Kenya. Armed with credible information from Cloudflare, IODA, and The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), the organizations submitted that there was deliberate interference, including internet throttling and the blocking of Social Media platform, Telegram, during the 2023 and 2024 #RejectFinanceBill protests and the 2024 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) Examinations.
In most countries, throttling (which is defined by AccessNow, an international NGO, as the intentional slowing down of network connections which can affect the entire network, or be used to target specific apps, websites, and IP addresses) and shutdowns (which is defined AccessNow, an international NGO as “an intentional disruption of internet or electronic communications, rendering them inaccessible or effectively unusable, for a specific population or within a location, often to exert control over the flow of information”) are justified in the name of national security, quelling dissent, and for the public good of all.
But is it really for the good of all, or a violation of rights? For the most part, it is a violation of rights. In Kenya, throttling and shutdowns are an affront to the constitutional rights to freedom of expression (Article 33), media freedom (Article 34), access to information (Article 35), amongst others.
If Kenyans do not push back, it might be extended to the 2027 elections amongst other areas. Kenyans must also push back against efforts to normalize threats to control the internet by government officials. During the national prayer breakfast , one MP prayed to God to intervene and manage the “social media spirit running the country,” while the president told the people of Mombasa in a town hall meeting last year that "I have the machinery to switch them off (internet and media stations), but I did not switch them off, because I am a believer of the rule of law," which was perceived to be a thinly veiled threat to social media users and media stations.
In the authoritarian regimes' playbooks, or regimes quickly descending to authoritarianism like Kenya, tampering with social media and internet is used to silence dissent, maintain morality and discipline, control information, and maintain power during periods of unrest and protests. It is also a major threat to democracy in the 21st century.
Wanja Maina writes on current affairs
