National shutdown
Internet services were interrupted for 3 hours at a time, from 08:00 to 11:00 local time (UTC +2) on 22 June 2021 for the duration of the secondary school exam period, with Cloudflare observing the largest drop in mobile Internet access. Sudan’s public prosecutor ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down mobile Internet connection upon the request of the Ministry of Education. This is the second year that Sudan cut off Internet services to prevent students from leaking exam questions. The shutdown sparked public outcry as banking, health, electronic payment and other services were disrupted during high transaction hours in the Sudanese working day.
- Total Duration 2 hours
Sudan
- Population
- 50,448,963
- UN Classification
-
- Least Developed Country
Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Not Free
Local impact
Internet services were interrupted for 3 hours at a time, from 08:00 to 11:00 local time (UTC +2) on 22 June 2021 for the duration of the secondary school exam period, with Cloudflare observing the largest drop in mobile Internet access. Sudan’s public prosecutor ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down mobile Internet connection upon the request of the Ministry of Education. This is the second year that Sudan cut off Internet services to prevent students from leaking exam questions. The shutdown sparked public outcry as banking, health, electronic payment and other services were disrupted during high transaction hours in the Sudanese working day.
Other supporting information
Following a trend in other Arab countries, Sudan decided to cut off the Internet during the general school examinations. The examinations take place between 19th and 30th of June 2021 as per the schedule below.
Google Traffic over the period
Social media
https://t.co/jlhzpNHo5e pic.twitter.com/7sCwYCLS1v
— Khattab Hamad - خَطَّٰاْبّ (@ga800l) June 21, 2021
Three shutdowns in three days in Sudan.
— Doug Madory (also on Bluesky) (@DougMadory) June 21, 2021
Three shutdowns in a week in Syria.
The scourge of exam-related outages continues. #KeepitOn
(graphics based on @kentikinc data) pic.twitter.com/HqtXv6NLPK
Similar to other countries, #Sudan 🇸🇩 is also implementing daily multi-hour #Internet shutdowns to prevent cheating on national exams. @fastly traffic graphs show the impact of the first three, occurring June 19-21.
— David Belson (@[email protected]) (@dbelson) June 21, 2021
Exam schedule: https://t.co/qlkYxInW72#KeepitOn pic.twitter.com/DPIFN7fy9c