Sudanese suffer as telecom outage enters second week

In Khartoum and El Gezira, a telecommunications and Internet outage has persisted for the ninth day. In Darfur and Kordofan, the network disruption has lasted for months. Despite the return of Sudani coverage on Monday, network fluctuations are reported. Zain and MTN networks continue to be cut off throughout the country.

Listeners in different states of Sudan spoke to Dabanga about the difficult conditions they face due to the country-wide network outage.

Bashir El Sadig, the director of a humanitarian organisation in El Gedaref, said that the outage has hindered the arrival of aid to the state and caused a severe shortage of funds.

“The outage has made daily life extremely difficult in El Gedaref. Residents spend many hours queueing in front of banks to obtain limited amounts of cash, and they struggle to purchase their daily needs,” El Sadig told Dabanga.

El Gedaref activist Jaafar Khidir said that people have resorted to writing letters to keep in touch with their loved ones. “Rumours of an impending attacks on the outskirts of El Gedaref frequently circulate, and are difficult to refute due to the blackout, evoking a state of panic”, he added.

In Wad Madani, the capital of El Gezira, resistance committees reported a continued interruption of telecommunication networks in the state capital and most villages in El Gezira over the past week. “The network outage expands the media blackout on crimes committed by the RSF in El Gezira”, the committees said in a statement yesterday.

On the same day, the Sharg El Nil (East Nile) Emergency Room in Khartoum North sounded the alarm that “resuming operations is becoming difficult, and sometimes impossible, due to the continued network disruption”.

The outage has further rendered work impossible for businesses and services that rely on online banking services such as Fawry and Bankak to operate. “Residents also face starvation as they are unable to buy food due to the lack of liquidity, and the disruption of online banking”, the emergency room said in a statement.

Emergency room member Mohamed Hisham told Dabanga that the network disruption “broke communication lines between staff in the emergency room and dispatchers on the ground”, and that a significant shortage of food and medicines has ensued “because we coordinate our supply orders online”.

Accusations

In a meeting with Attorney General Mawlana El Fatih on Tuesday, Sudanese Minister of Communication Adel Hasan asked for a criminal investigation into “the disruption of telecommunications by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over the past week”.

The Sudanese Telecommunications and Postal Regulatory Authority accused the RSF of cutting off telecommunications networks on February 5. The RSF denied the claim, accusing the telecommunications authority of being affiliated with the SAF.

Last week, members of the ousted Al Bashir regime, Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were separately accused of being behind the blackout.