The activities of the mobile phone platform ‘Telegram’ have been restored in Kenya after several days of a forced government blockade.  The Communications Authority of Kenya had announced its suspension citing ‘misuse to perpetuate criminal activities’.
The straw that broke the camel's back and prompted the Kenyan government to suspend Telegram's operation in Kenya was the channel's alleged interference with the ongoing secondary school examinations. The platform had in fact already been restricted in the past, most recently in November 2023 for the same reasons. The treasury then estimated that the issues in question, data theft and hacking, had cost Kenya about four billion shillings. So last Friday, internet watchdog Netblocks confirmed the temporary restrictions on Telegram on Safaricom, Telkom and Airtel, after sending a letter explaining the reasons. ‘While all other social media platforms operating in Kenya have taken steps to address the misuse of their platforms, we note with dismay that Telegram Inc. has not responded and continues to host offensive forums and channels,’ reads the notice signed by the authority's director general, David Mugonyi.
Telegram's activity was however restored after the end of the written examinations, not least because last September, after the arrest of the founder and administrator of the platform with around 1 billion users, Russian Pavel Durov, Telegram had nonetheless updated its privacy policies to allow it to share IP addresses and phone numbers with law enforcement agencies when users are known to have shared illegal content or are suspected of criminal activity.
Telegram has grown in popularity over the past decade. With its unfiltered features, it has been used to broadcast often graphic content and allows groups of up to 200,000 people to share unregulated information. It pioneered many features now common to other messaging apps, such as group channels and end-to-end encryption.
According to Kenyan human rights associations, in any case, the blocking of Telegram is a form of denial of citizens' rights, democracy and economic growth.
‘Internet disruptions such as these undermine fundamental human rights and freedoms outlined in the International Bill of Rights, to which the Kenyan government is a party, and the Kenyan Constitution. Similarly, they disrupt economic activity and undermine democratic values by restricting rights to access to information and freedom of expression, assembly and association,' the associations explained in a statement in the media.