Internet Shutdowns and the Meaning of African Democracy

Key Takeaways

• Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documented 313 internet shutdowns in 52 countries in 2025, a new record, with 30 of those across 15 African countries.
• Election-related shutdowns follow a consistent pattern, with Tanzania's five-day nationwide blackout during its 2025 elections leading the African Union to declare them undemocratic.
• Civil society is pushing back: the ECOWAS Court declared Senegal's shutdown unlawful, and regional bodies have condemned both Tanzania's and Uganda's election blackouts.
• The question Mandela Day forces us to ask: Is a democratic election meaningful when a government can silence the entire national network?

Tomorrow is Nelson Mandela International Day, marked every July 18th in honor of a man who spent 27 years imprisoned for the belief that every person deserves an equal stake in democratic life. The day has become a global prompt to reflect on what that inheritance actually requires of us. This year, I find myself thinking about it in the context of a specific and very modern question: what does democratic freedom mean when a government can silence an entire country's internet on election night? That’s not a hypothetical. It is what happened in Tanzania in October 2025.

A Record Year for Shutdowns

Access Now and the global #KeepItOn coalition documented 313 internet shutdowns in 52 countries in 2025, a new record for the third year running. Not a single day of 2025 passed without at least one shutdown somewhere in the world. Across Africa specifically, there were 30 shutdowns in 15 countries, and since 2016, the number of shutdowns on the continent has more than doubled.

The context behind those numbers matters as much as the totals. Conflict accounted for 40% of global shutdowns, with 125 incidents across 14 countries. But conflict isn’t the only trigger. Governments also shut down networks during protests, during exam periods, and most deliberately, during elections. In 2025, there were 12 election-related shutdowns in 8 countries globally. The pattern is consistent and worsening. Seven countries appeared on the offender list for the first time in 2025, meaning people in 100 countries have now experienced a shutdown since tracking began.

Tanzania’s 2025 Election

Of all the cases documented in 2025, Tanzania's is the one that most directly connects digital repression to the question of what democracy means.

When Tanzanian authorities imposed a five-day nationwide internet blackout during the October 2025 general elections alongside a curfew and a crackdown on protests, the consequences weren’t just technical. Under the cover of that blackout, security forces turned weapons on citizens in the streets, in shops, in bars, and in their homes. Tanzanian activists and citizen journalists recorded the violence and waited for the shutdown to lift to share it with the world. The African Union Election Observation Mission declared the elections undemocratic. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights condemned both the blackout and the violence that accompanied it.

Uganda followed a similar script in January 2026. Despite warnings issued ahead of the vote by three ACHPR commissioners and UN experts, Ugandan authorities cut connectivity during the elections anyway. The ACHPR condemned the shutdown afterward. Uganda's president was declared the winner of a seventh term in office.

Some governments have decided that the political cost of an international condemnation after an election is lower than the risk of losing control during one.

The Quieter Layers of Digital Repression

Shutdowns are the most visible form of digital control, but they rest on top of a broader infrastructure that’s harder to see and harder to challenge. Across the continent, governments apply pressure to telecom companies, pass legislation that makes interference easier to justify, and impose conditions on platforms before major political moments. By the time a government orders a shutdown, the legal and technical groundwork has usually already been laid.

Tanzania banned VPN use in 2020, years before the 2025 election blackout. India, which recorded 65 shutdowns in 2025, issued a two-month ban on unauthorized VPN use in Jammu and Kashmir and penalized around 800 identified users. The #KeepItOn coalition's 2026 Elections and Internet Shutdowns Watch is already monitoring more than 40 countries hosting elections this year, representing a combined population of 1.6 billion people, and has flagged at least 10 with a history of shutdowns. That monitoring isn’t a precaution. It’s based on documented patterns.

What the Fight Looks Like Now

The 2025 data is a record for shutdowns. It’s also a record for documented resistance, and I think it matters to hold both of those things at once.

The Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice ruled that Senegal's internet shutdown was unlawful in 2025, the fourth shutdown case that the regional court has heard since 2020. Civil society groups in Kenya, Tanzania, and Kazakhstan have filed legal challenges before national courts. In December 2025, the International Criminal Court formally recognized the link between internet shutdowns and crimes against humanity, after years of advocacy by Access Now and coalition partners. Bangladesh proposed legislation to outlaw shutdowns entirely, with language stipulating that connectivity can’t be disrupted under any circumstance. These are real milestones.

Mandela Day is framed as a day of service and action, but it’s also a day that carries a specific democratic memory: the memory of what it cost to build political rights on this continent, and what those rights require to function. An election isn’t democratic in any meaningful sense if voters can’t communicate, journalists can’t publish stories, and observers can’t share what they witness. A government that shuts down the internet on election night isn’t competing in a democratic process. It’s ending one.

That’s not a controversial claim. It’s a definitional one, and it’s the kind of clarity that Mandela Day exists to keep alive.