{"id":285386,"date":"2019-08-29T04:22:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T08:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.google.com\/articles\/CAIiEK22wCcLl8elyUS7VXgzKLMqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowocXwCjCk_roCMKOXzAM?oc=5"},"modified":"2026-10-23T11:14:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T15:14:49","slug":"ethiopia-internet-shutdowns-2018-2019-after-pledge-to-unblock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/285386","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia cut internet access repeatedly in 2018 and 2019, months after pledging to stop blocking websites"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ethiopia shut down internet and mobile services several times in 2018 and 2019, just months after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed promised that the government would stop blocking online publications, Global Voices reported in August 2019.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n

The Ethio Telecom headquarters building in Addis Ababa, photographed in February 2016. Ethio Telecom was the country\u2019s only internet provider during the 2018\u20132019 shutdowns. (Francisco Anzola \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) [file photo]<\/em><\/p>\n

In a parliamentary address on June 18, 2018, Abiy Ahmed said websites would no longer be blocked. His then chief of staff, Fitsum Arega, wrote the next day that more than 250 websites and blogs, many of them run from abroad and critical of the government, had been unblocked, Endalkachew Chala wrote in the second of a two-part Global Voices series on disinformation and shutdowns.<\/p>\n

Shutdowns resumed as ethnic and political tensions rose. Authorities cut access when ethnic violence broke out in eastern Ethiopia in August 2018. In September 2018, after deadly communal violence in Burayu on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, which followed the return from exile of Patriotic Ginbot 7 and the Oromo Liberation Front, the government again disrupted internet, mobile phone and social media services.<\/p>\n

Officials blamed social media, especially Facebook, for stoking the violence. Chala argued that deeper causes were also at work, including the long dispute over the expansion of Addis Ababa into the surrounding Oromia region, which had fuelled protests from 2015.<\/p>\n

From June 13, 2019, the country went through three major shutdowns in a row: a three-day blackout during national exams, an unexplained outage of at least 100 hours, and a shutdown after political violence in the Amhara region. The longest began on June 23, 2019, after the killings of the Amhara regional president and two of his advisers in Bahir Dar and of the army chief of staff in Addis Ababa. Service returned only after 10 days.<\/p>\n

Facebook and WhatsApp stayed blocked until Aug. 15, 2019, Chala reported. The shutdowns came without official announcements, reasons, expected duration or word on who ordered them, making them impossible to challenge, he wrote.<\/p>\n

It was not clear which agency was responsible. The Ethiopian Telecommunication Agency had neither the mandate nor the technical means to order shutdowns, and the Information Network Security Agency had been weakened by the reforms, Chala wrote, suggesting the orders came from an ad hoc body of ministries and security agencies with no formal legal process. All international traffic passed through three gateways run by the state monopoly Ethio Telecom, which made central control easy.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed defended the blackouts at a press conference as necessary for safety, security and public order, and pointed out that other countries, such as India, also cut access. Chala wrote that such claims usually came without evidence and that the shutdowns infringed Ethiopians\u2019 right to information and free expression online.<\/p>\n

The pattern continued. Ethiopia passed a law against hate speech and disinformation, Proclamation No. 1185\/2020, in February 2020. It cut internet access across most of the country for about three weeks after the singer Hachalu Hundessa was killed on June 29, 2020. Tigray had no service for more than two years after war broke out there in November 2020, and the Amhara region was cut off again in August 2023 as fighting between the federal government and Fano forces spread.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/strong> Global Voices: \u201cMonths after pledge to open internet, Ethiopia disrupts connectivity amidst communal violence, tension\u201d by Endalkachew Chala (Aug. 29, 2019)<\/a>, Wikipedia: Internet censorship in Ethiopia<\/a>, Wikipedia: Hachalu Hundessa riots<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethiopia shut down internet and mobile services several times in 2018 and 2019, just months after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed promised that the government would stop blocking online publications, Global Voices reported in August 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":838117,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/ethio-telecom-headquarters-addis-ababa-2016.jpg?fit=1280%2C785&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1cf0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285386"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838122,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285386\/revisions\/838122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}