Ethiopia is the Latest Country to Block Access to Social Networking Sites

Countries blocking Internet access has taken limelight these past few users and the authorities have different reasons of doing that. Since social networking sites have made it easy for people to communicate to each other which can bring a host of problems to authorities in a bid to control the flow of information between people.

This next case is not new as we have seen the same case being reported in another African country. Ethiopia, our neighbour to the north was reported by Africa News to have blocked access to social networking sites since Saturday due to exams.

Exam leakage has been amplified with the increased use of social networking sites due to how it makes it easy for students to communicate with each other. In Ethiopia’s case, the authorities blocked temporarily access to these sites to prevent leakage of university entrance examinations. “This is a temporary measure until Wednesday as the social networks serve as a distraction to the students,” Getachew Reda, the government spokesman told the AFP as reported by the publication. Some of the social networking sites that couldn’t be accessed in the country include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Viber which naturally was criticized by internet users in the country. This apparently led people to use VPNs to access them.

This case is similar to what we saw in Algeria where authorities banned access to popular social networking sites due to exam leakages.It also comes at a time when a UN Council passed a resolution that condemned the various Internet disruptions across the world terming them as a violation of human rights. Since that resolution was nonbinding, we will still see these cases of Internet disruptions across the world.