Internet Shutdowns

For a fifth – and presumably final – day, the Algerian government is shutting down the Internet for the entire country during school exams, following the pattern of the last few days. Data from Cloudflare Radar and IODA show that Algeria appears to be following a similar pattern to last year, with a longer outage in the morning and then a second outage in the afternoon. As we noted in our post about exam-related shutdowns in 2024, these Baccalaureate exams go from 9-13 June 2024. We have seen daily shutdowns on each of the days, and today is supposed to be the final day.

In analyzing the data, it appears that the Algerian government is engaging in content blocking whereby the actual Internet connections remain active, but the Internet service providers are ordered to block certain sites, including social media networks and messaging sites.

As we have repeatedly written about here on Pulse, Internet shutdowns cause great harm to a country’s economy and society and are in our opinion not the appropriate mechanism to cope with potential exam cheating

There has not yet been a formal statement from the government of Algeria. In fact, media reports indicated that the Minister of Education had previously stated that there would not be Internet shutdowns this year’s exams. In a session last week, the Minister of Education outlined the operations for the 2024 Baccalaureate exams and did not mention any form of an Internet shutdown. However, without any warning the Internet was shut down in the similar manner to how the government has shut down Internet access in past years during the exams.