Safaricom Reportedly Blocks Telegram Access As Kenya’s National Exams Kick Off

Kenya’s largest telecommunications company, Safaricom, has reportedly blocked access to Telegram Messenger, disrupting services for thousands of users on the same day national examinations began.

According to multiple local reports, users on Safaricom’s Home Fiber and mobile data networks experienced difficulty accessing Telegram’s app and web platform from around 10:30 AM local time on Monday. Services were restored more than three hours later, according to investigations by Cryptopolitan.

Exam-Related Crackdown Suspected

The outage is widely believed to be linked to ongoing efforts by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) to combat examination leaks, which authorities say are increasingly coordinated through encrypted digital platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp.

A KNEC fraud watch report released in August revealed that 18 out of 51 active Telegram channels were flagged for allegedly circulating KCSE and KASNEB examination papers.

Reports by Nation Africa in late October indicated that 123 teachers and 10 students had been arrested over the past year for examination-related irregularities.
“As we speak, the problem is no longer just with the students—it’s with those in charge,” a senior KNEC official said. The council believes that school heads and teachers are now more frequently implicated in exam fraud than students themselves.

History of Exam-Period Internet Restrictions

Data from the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) shows similar Telegram disruptions occurred during the 2023 and 2024 KCSE examination periods. These outages reportedly affected users on Safaricom, Airtel, and the state-run Jambonet network.

OONI’s report found that some Telegram endpoints were blocked at the IP level, resulting in connection timeouts — sometimes even outside official exam hours.

Neither Safaricom nor the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has issued a statement addressing the latest incident, fueling speculation that the disruption was part of coordinated KCSE security operations.

“We have been shutting down Telegram every time there are national examinations, especially KCSE. There has to be a better way to control leakages on that platform than shutting off other users who have nothing to do with the exams,” one X user lamented.

Second Telegram Outage in 2025

This marks the second time this year that Telegram services have been disrupted in Kenya. On June 25, users nationwide experienced a connectivity blackout during mass protests against proposed government tax hikes — the largest demonstrations in Kenya’s history.

Network monitoring groups and digital rights organizations described the June outage as a deliberate attempt to throttle access to both Telegram and X (formerly Twitter).

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Following those events, the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) warned Safaricom, Airtel Kenya, and Telkom Kenya that a court order prohibits any form of internet shutdown during public demonstrations.

The order, issued by Justice Bahati Mwamuye, stemmed from a petition by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and civil society groups after the 2024 nationwide internet blackout.

KHRC cautioned telecom providers that any attempt to throttle, downgrade, or block Kenyans’ access to internet services would constitute a violation of constitutional rights.