On 20 October 2026 Access Now published Deliberately forgotten: internet shutdowns with no end. It argues that shutdowns with no announced end date are becoming more common each year. It points to Ethiopia's Tigray region, which was cut off for more than two years during the civil war. Access Now says new shutdowns there have been reported. We could not independently confirm a new Ethiopian shutdown in October 2026, and the pages we retrieved gave no new Ethiopian figures. What the record does show is how an open-ended shutdown works, and why Africa's existing rules have not stopped one.
The strongest case for a shutdown
Governments do not cut networks for no reason. The usual argument is that an armed insurgency can coordinate attacks over mobile networks, and that viral disinformation can fuel ethnic violence. In a civil war that argument carries real weight. Officials also point out that physical damage to infrastructure can look like a deliberate blackout. In Tigray, both claims were partly true. Telecom lines were damaged, and fighting was real.
The argument still fails on proportionality. A blanket cut falls on hospitals, banks, aid agencies and families, and it hides the abuses that wartime scrutiny exists to expose.
What Tigray's blackout actually looked like
Access Now's account says the communications blackout in Tigray began in November 2020. When it published its update on 1 February 2023, the blackout had lasted more than two years. Access Now's Tigray update reports that restoration came only after the 2 November 2022 cease-fire. An AP report dated 7 December 2022 found that some phone service had returned in parts of southern Tigray and in Shire. Phone lines in Axum and Adigrat were still down, and banks stayed closed.
Recovery was slow. By January 2023, according to Access Now, Ethio Telecom had repaired 981 of 1,800 km of damaged fiber. A federal spokesperson said telecom services had been restored in 51 towns. Phone service was reportedly back across the region, but internet access lagged, with slow speeds and limited 2G. Neither the government nor Ethio Telecom gave a timeline for full restoration. The region has more than six million people.
Tigray was not an isolated case. A Kenyan outlet reported that internet services returned across 19 cities in the Amhara region on 13–14 July 2024, after an 11-month blackout that began on 3 August 2023 amid clashes between Fano militia and government forces. The same report cites the Centre for Rights and Democracy counting at least 26 shutdowns in Ethiopia since 2016. We could not verify that count independently, so treat it as an advocacy-group figure. Even so, the pattern is consistent: a shutdown starts as an emergency measure and then drifts without a legal end point.
Why the rules did not bind
The peace deal that ended the Tigray war did not name telecoms. The Pretoria Agreement, signed on 2 November 2022, commits the government in Article 7(2)(b) to "expedite and coordinate the restoration of essential services in the Tigray region within agreed timeframes." The text does not mention telecommunications or banking. Whether connectivity counts as an essential service is left to later definition, and no timeframe is written into the treaty itself.
The continental human rights framework has the same gap. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights adopted Resolution 580 on Internet Shutdowns and Elections in Africa on 8 March 2024. It urges states to keep internet access open and secure before, during and after elections, to refrain from ordering the interruption of telecommunications services, and to require providers to warn users of possible disruptions and resolve them quickly. That is sound guidance. But it is a non-binding resolution about elections. It does not address conflict-zone shutdowns like those in Tigray and Amhara, and it sets no maximum duration or review process.
What a proportionate rule looks like
The policy lesson is not that governments must never restrict a network in a crisis. A rule that no one expects to be followed invites open-ended shutdowns. A narrower rule is more credible and more enforceable. It should have four parts:
- Written legal basis. Any order is published, names the issuing authority and states its stated purpose.
- Hard time limit. Orders expire in days, not months, and renewal needs independent review.
- Targeted measures first. Blocking specific services or locations is preferred over regional blackouts.
- Restoration clauses in peace deals. Ceasefire agreements name telecoms and banking explicitly, with dates.
The last point matters most for Ethiopia. Pretoria's "agreed timeframes" for essential services left connectivity to bargaining. Naming telecoms and setting a restoration date would have turned a discretionary favor into an obligation that mediators and the African Union could monitor.
This fits a pro-innovation position. Ethiopia has one of Africa's largest populations and a state-owned telecom monopoly that is opening to competition. Long shutdowns raise the risk for every business that depends on connectivity, from mobile money to logistics. Predictable, rules-based limits on shutdowns are part of a credible investment climate.
What to watch
Access Now's claim that indefinite shutdowns are rising is a trend assertion that readers should test against its full dataset. For Ethiopia, the useful questions are concrete. Is any region currently under a shutdown, and under what written order? Does the government publish restoration timelines? And will the African Union fold telecom restoration into its monitoring of the Pretoria process? Until those questions have public answers, Ethiopia's two longest blackouts will remain the clearest evidence that principles without deadlines do not stop shutdowns.