Tanzania back online after politically motivated five-day outage

The African nation of Tanzania has reconnected to the internet after a five day outage. As noted by outage-watcher NetBlocks and Cloudflare’s Radar service, traffic to and from Tanzania dropped to near-zero early on October 29th – the date of national elections for a new president. The poll went ahead despite the government …

[beast666]

"The poll went ahead despite the government barring opposition candidates from standing."

A bit like happens in the EU? - Romania, Ireland, Germany. France etc

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing that the occurence of such election-day internet shutdowns seem to be going down over the years. AccessNow for example reports 7 such shutdowns out of 25 countries monitored in 2024 (28%), but 3 shutdowns out of 13 countires in 2025 (23%), including Tanzania.

There may be hope yet (hopefully)!

[Anonymous Coward]

I forsee Tanzania offering the US a "cultural exchange" to help with their democracy problem.

[Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward]

Given what happened in Nepal, and now recently in Tanzania, I'm wondering what will happen in 2026 when South Africa votes for local governance... given that the ANC is not the golden child anymore.

It will be interesting definitely. Interesting as in "Interesting Times".

Mine's the one with a cloak shield built in.