What is known, and what is not
Phone and internet service across Tigray failed on 25 September as fighting between Ethiopian federal forces and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and its allies escalated. Attribution is contested. Al Jazeera relays Reuters reporting that the TPLF ordered private operator Safaricom and state-owned Ethio telecom to cut access. Reuters' account, syndicated by Business Recorder, cites four sources, including a diplomatic contact. It adds that a source close to the TPLF denied responsibility and blamed the government.
The same Reuters account says calls and messages failed on Ethio Telecom's network while Safaricom had limited connectivity. That does not match the version in which only Ethio Telecom was cut and Safaricom stayed up. The UN's rights office said connectivity was reportedly down in Mekelle and parts of Amhara. We cannot independently establish who gave the order, and readers should treat any single-operator account as contradicted.
The strongest case for cutting the network
There is a real security argument. One source told Reuters the restrictions may be meant to neutralise the government's battlefield drone advantage by denying operators access to the mobile network. Mobile networks can carry coordination and targeting data, and every belligerent in a war has a plausible security case for controlling them. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights does not treat shutdowns as unlawful in every circumstance. Its statement on Tanzania's October 2025 outage says an exceptional shutdown must be legally authorised, serve a legitimate aim, and meet necessity and proportionality tests.
Why a regional blackout does not pass that test
The drone rationale, even if true, is a narrow military aim. A blackout across a region cannot tell a drone operator's connection from a hospital's. UN High Commissioner Volker Türk put the civilian cost plainly in the OHCHR statement of 25 September, reproduced in full by Scoop: the interruptions "risk limiting the ability of civilians to flee to safe areas, and preventing humanitarian workers from reaching those in need."
Tigray has already shown what this looks like. Access Now's account of the earlier shutdown says the cut, which began in November 2020, affected over 6 million people. It hampered aid delivery and stopped reporters from documenting the conflict. Reuters notes that the 2020-2022 blackout, combined with limits on food, cash and medicines, pushed hundreds of thousands of people into famine-like conditions.
The costs are also asymmetric. Switching a network off takes hours. Switching it back on took years. By January 2023, Ethio Telecom had repaired 981 of 1,800 kilometres of damaged fibre and restored service in 51 towns, according to the same Access Now report. Internet access still lagged behind voice service. A short-term tactical gain is paid for with a long-term loss of connectivity, commerce and trust.
The accountability gap
The African Commission's Resolution 580, adopted on 8 March 2024, calls on states to legislate for open and secure access. It also asks them to require providers to inform users of disruptions and resolve them promptly. It was written around elections, and it addresses states, not armed movements. If a non-state actor really is ordering licensed operators to cut service, no African instrument speaks to that directly. This is our reading, not a finding by any tribunal.
The practical consequence is that the operators become the choke point. Whoever holds the leverage, whether a ministry or an armed group controlling territory, can demand a cut. A carrier that has no published legal process to point to has little basis to refuse. The right response is for operators and regulators to insist on a transparent, documented order, and to make the demand and the operator's response visible. Secret verbal instructions are what allow blackouts to be denied afterwards.
A regional pattern, not an outlier
Access Now's 2024 Africa review counted 21 shutdowns across 15 African countries, the highest annual number recorded for the region. Ethiopia was one of the 15. The report says residents of Tigray and Amhara were still suffering shutdowns that began in 2020 and 2023, with connectivity well below pre-conflict levels. Tigray in September 2026 therefore looks less like a new event than the latest step in a trend the Commission has tried to arrest with soft law.
What proportionate policy looks like
Our view is that pro-security and pro-connectivity positions are less opposed than they look. If the concern is drones, the proportionate tools are narrow ones: targeted restrictions on specific sites or frequencies, time-limited and reviewed. A region-wide cut is the opposite, and it hurts the most people for the smallest security gain. A defensible framework would have five elements:
- Written, published orders naming the legal basis, scope and expiry.
- A carve-out for emergency, health and humanitarian traffic.
- Operator disclosure to customers, as Resolution 580 already envisages for elections.
- Independent measurement, such as the NetBlocks data that first flagged this event.
- A commitment to restore fast, with fibre repair prioritised over political bargaining.
None of this requires a view on who is right in the war. It requires only that the people of Tigray, who have lived through this once, are not treated as collateral in a second blackout.