Civilians in Chad say many businesses are at a standstill since an internet outage that began Tuesday morning.
Kaimoui Fabrice, a student in the University of N’djamena, said he has not been able to carry out online research or talk with his supervisor at the University of Lyon in France since the outage began.
He spoke to VOA on Thursday via telephone from Chad’s capital, saying he is surprised by the government’s indifference and failure to find a solution in the days since October 15 when civilians started complaining. He added that the internet outage has paralyzed businesses in Chad.
Kaimoui said students are angry because the internet blackout deprives them of their right to education and deprives civilians of their rights to freedom of information and expression.
Allamaye Halina, Chad’s prime minister, said he is surprised that some civilians think the blackout was ordered by the government for security reasons. He denied those allegations, adding that many government offices have also been unable to render services to users because of the outage.
He said Chad’s government regrets that the shutdown has led to a nosedive in business transactions, and has negatively impacted the lives of civilians.
Halina told state TV on Thursday that Chad’s government has ordered the country’s minister of communication to meet with SAFITEL and SOTEL, the companies that manage Chad’s fiber-optic networks, to make sure connection is reestablished as soon as possible.
Boukar Michel, Chad’s minister of communication and digital economy, said government officials in neighboring Cameroon, which connects Chad to the internet, have informed him that emergency repairs are ongoing on broken fiber-optic cables around Adamawa, an administrative unit in Cameroon that shares a boundary with Chad. He said the repair work has yet to be completed because floods have made access to the area difficult.
Boukar said he is unhappy with internet suppliers for not informing users through text messages and radio announcements that the interruption was caused by broken cables, not ordered by the government as many civilians believe.
Cameroon said its technicians are deployed to repair the cables, but has not said when connections will be reestablished.
In the meantime, many Chadians said they believe the internet blackout is due to political tensions ahead of the December 29 local and parliamentary elections.
Last week, Succes Masra, president of the Transformers, Chad’s main opposition party, called for elections to be pushed back to 2025.
Masra said ongoing floods that have killed at least 600 people and displaced about 2 million make it impossible for elections to be held in December.
The government says the elections must take place as planned, and denies claims that it ordered an internet shutdown to stop youths from using social media to mobilize their peers as the election date nears.
In February, before Chad’s May 6 presidential polls, Chad’s government interrupted connectivity, saying it acted in response to a deadly attack on the country’s internal security agency.
In June, after the opposition contested the election victory of President General Mahamat Idriss Deby, connectivity was disrupted again and only civilians with Starlink equipment maintained access to the internet.
