Content blocking
Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook
Internet users in Zambia were unable to access social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Whatsapp, on the day of the country’s general elections on the 12th of August. Local media had previously reported government plans to shut down access to social media to ‘maintain peace and order during the voting period.’ Internet users in Zambia, including journalists, lamented their inability to keep track of election proceedings, and to go about their work properly without these channels of communication. Access was restored by order of the High Court, following a lawsuit put forward by Chapter One Foundation, a Zambian non-governmental organization, challenging the decision of the Zambian Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) to disrupt Internet connectivity. The ZICTA agreed in March 2022 not to act outside its legal authority to interrupt access to the internet, and to inform the public of the reason for any internet shutdown within 36 hours of implementation in the future.
- Total Duration 2 days
Zambia
- Population
- 20,723,965
- UN Classification
-
- Least Developed Country
- Land Locked Developing Country
Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Partly Free
Local impact
Internet users in Zambia were unable to access social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Whatsapp, on the day of the country’s general elections on the 12th of August. Local media had previously reported government plans to shut down access to social media to ‘maintain peace and order during the voting period.’ Internet users in Zambia, including journalists, lamented their inability to keep track of election proceedings, and to go about their work properly without these channels of communication. Access was restored by order of the High Court, following a lawsuit put forward by Chapter One Foundation, a Zambian non-governmental organization, challenging the decision of the Zambian Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) to disrupt Internet connectivity. The ZICTA agreed in March 2022 not to act outside its legal authority to interrupt access to the internet, and to inform the public of the reason for any internet shutdown within 36 hours of implementation in the future.
Other supporting information
On 12th August 2021 – the day of Zambia’s 2021 general election – OONI measurements collected from 7 local networks in Zambia showed that the testing of WhatsApp presented anomalies, suggesting that the app was blocked.
The following chart aggregates OONI measurements collected from 8 local networks in Zambia, illustrating the blocking of WhatsApp on 12th August 2021.
Chart 1: OONI measurements on the testing of WhatsApp, collected from Zambia between 1st August 2021 to 18th August 2021: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2021-08-18&since=2021-08-01&probe_cc=ZM&test_name=whatsapp