National shutdown
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The government of Chad again restricted Chadians' access to social media platforms throughout July and August 2020, in an attempt to control the spread of what it called 'messages inciting hate'. Access to the wider Internet was also throttled (slowed down) or completely blocked across the country intermittently. Chad has the 10th lowest Internet resilience ranking on the Internet Society Internet Resilience Index (IRI) for Africa and around 8% of the population of around 17 million people have access to the Internet. The vast majority of Chadians use mobile Internet and individuals with fixed line connectivity stands at 0%. While insufficient infrastructure, low bandwidth, low internet penetration rate and the prohibitively high cost of reliable connectivity hamper online services, entrepreneurs and businesses are slowly building the digital economy. During the shutdown, those offering online services that relied on messaging apps either stopped trading or had to resort to costly VPNs to circumvent the block, which resulted in them losing their livelihood or reducing their profit.
- Total Duration 48 days
Chad
- Population
- 19,319,064
- UN Classification
-
- Least Developed Country
- Land Locked Developing Country
Local impact
The government of Chad again restricted Chadians' access to social media platforms throughout July and August 2020, in an attempt to control the spread of what it called 'messages inciting hate'. Access to the wider Internet was also throttled (slowed down) or completely blocked across the country intermittently. Chad has the 10th lowest Internet resilience ranking on the Internet Society Internet Resilience Index (IRI) for Africa and around 8% of the population of around 17 million people have access to the Internet. The vast majority of Chadians use mobile Internet and individuals with fixed line connectivity stands at 0%. While insufficient infrastructure, low bandwidth, low internet penetration rate and the prohibitively high cost of reliable connectivity hamper online services, entrepreneurs and businesses are slowly building the digital economy. During the shutdown, those offering online services that relied on messaging apps either stopped trading or had to resort to costly VPNs to circumvent the block, which resulted in them losing their livelihood or reducing their profit.
Social media
Read AccessNow’s Shutdown Stories to find out how this shutdown affected Chadians, their families, education and livelihoods.
Media coverage
Read AccessNow’s Shutdown Stories to find out how this shutdown affected Chadians, their families, education and livelihoods.