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| Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa |
Safaricom PLC has confirmed internet disruptions across the country amid ongoing Finance Bill 2024 protests. Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa speaking at a past event. The leading telecommunications firm said the internet outage was caused by the failure of its two underwater cables, which deliver internet traffic in and out of the country. What Safaricom is doing to solve internet outage The company noted that it activated redundancy measures that will address the interruption. “We have experience an outage on two of our under sea cables that deliver internet in and out of the country. We have activated redundancy measures to keep you connected as we await the full restoration of the cables,” said Safaricom. The telco cautioned Kenyans to expect reduced internet speed and intermittency on various service applications, including the M-Pesa app and Safaricom App. Safaricom noted that to access M-Pesa, customers should use the USSD code *334# or the SIM toolkit. This came a day after the company announced scheduled maintenance of its mobile money services. What government said about Internet disruption The Law Society of Kenya, along with 26 other international and local lobby groups, claimed that the government planned to shut down internet services during the anti-Finance Bill 2024 protests. In response, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) denied the claims, stating that they had no intentions of disrupting internet services during the demonstrations. “Such actions would be a betrayal of the constitution as a whole, the freedom of expression in particular, and our ethos,” the statement read in part. However, we urge Kenyans to use the digital space with respect to all and within the confines of the law,” said CA in a statement. The authority also stressed that such measures would jeopardise the country’s swiftly expanding digital economy.
by Wycliffe Musalia