Recently the RDC urged telecoms companies in its country to block social networks for a few days, to avoid leaking information or images about protests against the plans of the current DRC president Joseph Kabila.
Now it seems that the Kenya wants to walk the same way, as the country can turn off the Internet on the next general election, which will take place on 8's August 2017 day. The warning came from the Kenya Communication Authority (CA), the national regulator for the sector, which sees in the measure a way of guarding against a possible scenario of violence. This measure consists in trying to prevent situations of the kind that happened in the period of 2007 and 2008, after a post-electoral violence in which 1500 people were killed and other 600.000 people were injured.
It is also worth noting that the Kenya Communications Authority also invested 5,7 thousand USD in a social network monitoring system and another 3,6 me USD in an identical system for mobile networks. In this country, blocking access to the Internet is seen as a measure of last resort in order to be able to get around any situation that may get out of control.
It seems that this “fashion” will catch on in Africa…
