There has been a major internet disruption in Kenya following a wave of demonstrations across the country, as police violently cracked down on citizens taking to the streets to protest a government bill to hike taxes despite tough economic times.

Kenyan telecom giant Safaricom initially blamed the internet outage on a problem with one of its underground cables. However, internet watchdog agencies disputed this claim. The company’s CEO, Peter Ndegwa, later claimed the outage has affected the entire telco industry. However, apart from Airtel Kenya which had an intermittent outage no other operator ratified this claim.

Safaricom’s internet disruption is being viewed by many as having political undertones. The outage has angered its customers, some of whom are Kenya’s popular social media influencers who have expressed their outrage online. Read more about this story on our LinkedIn page