Kenyan authorities switched off three of the country's largest television networks mid-broadcast on January 30, 2018, the day opposition leader Raila Odinga staged a symbolic swearing-in ceremony in Nairobi. KTN, NTV and Citizen TV went dark on the orders of the state regulator, and stayed off air in parts for over a week, not fully restored until February 9. The episode has become a reference point for understanding how Kenya's government has since widened its toolkit - moving from shutting down broadcasters to throttling the internet itself and now pressuring the platforms that carry public speech.
A pattern that repeats and escalates
The 2018 blackout was not an isolated decision. During tax protests in June 2024, authorities cut internet connectivity nationwide for roughly seven hours and detained large numbers of demonstrators. Independent monitoring by the Open Observatory of Network Interference found that at least three networks also blocked the web version of Telegram during that period, restrictions that were lifted the same day. A year later, during the June 2025 protests, a communications directive told media houses to halt live coverage of the unrest, and Telegram was blocked again - this time in apparent defiance of a High Court injunction that had explicitly barred interference with internet and Telegram access, according to the digital rights group Access Now.
These episodes help explain why Freedom House, in its 2025 assessment, identified Kenya as having recorded the steepest single decline in internet freedom among the 72 countries it tracked. The finding fits a broader regional and global trend: Freedom House recorded a fifteenth consecutive year of global decline in internet freedom, and Access Now documented at least 313 shutdowns worldwide in 2025, including 30 across 15 African countries, with protests the most common trigger, followed by elections. Tanzania imposed a blackout after election-day protests in late October 2025, easing it only partially days later alongside a curfew; in Uganda, authorities ordered a nationwide suspension of public internet access just before the 2026 general election, despite earlier denials that such a shutdown was planned.
Law, courts and the limits of state power
Kenya's government has also tried to formalize these powers through legislation. In October 2025, President William Ruto signed the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes (Amendment) Act, which Human Rights Watch warned could criminalize legitimate online expression. The law expanded the authority of the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Committee to render websites and applications inaccessible. Kenya's courts, however, have repeatedly intervened: the High Court suspended key provisions within a week of the signing, and by July 2026 had ruled the website-blocking powers unconstitutional. Kennedy Kachwanya, chairperson of the Bloggers Association of Kenya, told Human Rights Watch the amended law posed an unacceptable threat to digital rights.
Platforms become the new battleground
Amnesty International separately documented a coordinated influence campaign running from June 2024 to July 2025 that used social media to suppress Gen Z-led protests. Amnesty found pro-government networks flooding X with identical messages to manipulate trending algorithms, with one participant describing payment of tens of thousands of Kenyan shillings a day to a network of roughly twenty people pushing coordinated content. Amnesty said X failed to act against campaigns that violated its own policies. Kenya's government is now pressing platforms directly: its ICT Cabinet Secretary told the Senate that X, TikTok and Meta must establish physical offices in the country within three months or risk losing operating approval, with the communications authority empowered to suspend non-compliant services. Framed as child-safety protection, the measure also raises a quieter concern - that a local office gives authorities a direct lever to pressure staff and request content removals outside public view.
What began as a decision to pull television transmitters in 2018 has evolved into a wider contest over who controls digital speech in Kenya. Courts have blunted some of the government's sharpest tools, but the pressure keeps shifting form - from screens, to networks, to the companies themselves. How those companies respond, whether by resisting restrictive orders or accommodating them to retain market access, will shape how much of Kenya's public conversation remains outside state reach.