\n<\/p>\n
Kenyan novelist and theorist <\/span>Ng\u0169g\u0129 wa Thiong\u2019o<\/span><\/a> argued that freedom is not merely the absence of physical chains, but the capacity to name, narrate, and control one\u2019s own story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Internet shutdowns have become a strategic tool by threat actors to erase memory and bury mass atrocities in the dark. These shutdowns have become widespread in Africa, particularly during sensitive periods such as elections, and have significant consequences for democratic engagement.<\/span><\/p>\n Across East Africa, the struggle for democratic accountability is increasingly fought not just in streets and ballot boxes, but also in the digital ether through smartphones, social media, geolocated imagery, satellite data, and citizen-generated content. In contexts marked by shrinking civic space, state violence, and the manipulation or suppression of information, digital evidence often becomes contested terrain: denied, obscured, or weaponized by political actors seeking impunity.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet it is precisely here, where truth and power collide, that <\/span>Open source intelligence<\/span> (OSINT) has emerged as a catalyst for justice. During the 2025-2026 elections in Tanzania and Uganda, OSINT played a critical role in exposing widespread electoral violations, including grave acts of violence that government-imposed internet blackouts intended to conceal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSome family members, colleagues, and friends went missing with no information for a couple of days and weeks. Some are still missing to date. My trusted source from Muhimbili National Hospital said they had many dead bodies and the mortuary was full. The injured were treated and then taken by the police to unknown places\u2026 These are the people we believe were buried while alive.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n A journalist from Tanzania<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n The government-ordered disruptions of connectivity in <\/span>Tanzania\u2019s October 2025 election cycle<\/span><\/a> coincided with widespread protests over contested results. Rights groups condemned these shutdowns, warning that blocking access during elections undermines citizens\u2019 ability to monitor events and exercise their fundamental rights to information and expression.<\/span><\/p>\n Similarly, <\/span>Uganda\u2019s January 2026 elections<\/span><\/a> were marked by directives to suspend public internet access and restrict platforms such as social media and messaging services. Critics noted that these measures interrupted civic reporting, digital coordination, and independent monitoring, while amplifying fears of repression in already volatile political environments.<\/span><\/p>\n Such shutdowns are not merely technical inconveniences; they silence citizens, isolate observers, and handicap civil society\u2019s ability to collect and preserve evidence precisely when abuses are most likely to occur.<\/span><\/p>\n In Uganda, staying connected is getting harder each election cycle as authorities increasingly<\/span><\/i> Agather Atuhaire, Ugandan Activist<\/span><\/p>\n Internet shutdowns are designed to impede reporting and restrict free information flow. However, once connectivity is restored, even amid partial outages, OSINT methodologies have enabled journalists and activists to preserve human rights abuses that would otherwise be hidden.<\/span><\/p>\n In Tanzania, open-source investigative journalist Mike Yambo worked alongside <\/span>Daily Nation<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Bellingcat<\/span><\/a> to produce <\/span>Blood on the Streets<\/span><\/i><\/a>, an investigation of the killings that took place during the Tanzania protests. The investigation demonstrated how geospatial analysis, open data, and visual verification can transform fragmented citizen footage into credible, actionable evidence mapping patterns of lethal violence. By systematically collecting and verifying location-tagged videos and images shared by witnesses, researchers were able to counter silence and official minimization, providing a structured, evidence-based account of abuses that officials had sought to obscure.<\/span><\/p>\n During the recently concluded elections in Uganda, OSINT was applied proactively and retrospectively. A journalist supported by WITNESS through the <\/span>Fortifying Community Truth (FCT)<\/span><\/a> project used open-source investigative tools to document violations of Ugandan electoral law, monitor campaign conduct, fact-check viral election claims, and build a Database of Electoral Law Violations. Combining various OSINT methodologies, their work identified patterns of potential violations and strengthened accountability efforts amidst the growing presence of security forces and reports of clashes between candidates and the electorate.<\/span><\/p>\n First introduced in 2024 across <\/span>West and Central Africa<\/span><\/a>, the FCT project was built to defend community truths and challenge efforts to discredit or erase crucial audiovisual evidence. The initiative seeks to counter the sidelining of local journalists, whose lived experiences and proximity to events provide depth and authenticity often overlooked in favor of \u201coutside experts.\u201d By equipping these journalists with open-source verification tools and audiovisual techniques, WITNESS reinforces the authority of community-based reporting, fostering a more inclusive, credible, and just information ecosystem where local voices shape truth and accountability.<\/span><\/p>\n Building on this model, FCT expanded into East Africa, engaging journalists from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The program identified a diverse group of community changemakers deeply rooted in their contexts and committed to meaningful change. Participants received training in open-source visual verification, archiving, and storytelling, and are connected with expert advisors from across Africa and beyond. Together, they design and implement projects that impact thousands within their communities, strengthening local capacity to document, verify, and fortify the truth.<\/span><\/p>\n At the same time that authorities restrict access, citizens have wielded digital technology as a core tool of political resilience, organization, and truth-telling.<\/span><\/p>\n During the 2024-2025 Gen Z protests in Kenya, a powerful youth\u2011led movement emerged in opposition to the controversial <\/span>Finance Bill 2024<\/span><\/i>, which proposed widespread tax increases. Young activists mobilized rapidly through social media platforms (<\/span>#RejectFinanceBill2024<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>#OccupyParliament<\/span><\/a>) to coordinate demonstrations, share critical legal information, and document clashes with security forces. These digital networks enabled real\u2011time visibility into state responses even when traditional media coverage was curtailed and authorities sought to control narratives surrounding the unrest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When thousands of demonstrators marched to the Kenyan Parliament in Nairobi on 25 June 2024, security forces responded with tear gas, water cannons, and live ammunition, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries. Investigations later reported that <\/span>many of those shot<\/span><\/a> were unarmed and not posing a threat when gunfire erupted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In this fraught environment, open source intelligence (OSINT) was deployed to expose patterns of lethal force and identify perpetrators. <\/span>Blood Parliament<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a documentary produced by <\/span>BBC\u2019s Africa Eye<\/span><\/i><\/a> (viewer discretion), used OSINT and forensic techniques to track the fatal shootings and identify the security officers involved.<\/span><\/p>\n This dynamic underscores a crucial point: digital technologies are not neutral. While states can and do deploy them to surveil, suppress, and distort, communities and activists also use the same technologies to resist, broadcast the truth, and build resilient democratic engagement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Within this context, where anyone can use their smartphone as a tool for accountability, a community-centered visual verification approach is indispensable.<\/span><\/p>\n WITNESS is challenging the dominant model of visual verification and investigation. Our community-based framework directly counters the notion that only institutions and analysts in the Global North possess the authority to verify abuses.<\/span> We developed the <\/span>Visual Verification Guide<\/span><\/a> to help strengthen locally grounded investigative work. Designed for human rights defenders, journalists, and community documenters, the guide offers practical steps, processes, and tools that enable local actors to assess the accuracy, reliability, and credibility of audio-visual content, particularly in contexts where official information is unavailable, manipulated, or deliberately withheld.<\/span><\/p>\n Complementing this resource, our resource library also features guidance on <\/span>documenting during internet shutdowns<\/span><\/a>. At WITNESS, we recognize that documentation cannot wait for ideal filming conditions and that communities must still be able to record, safeguard, and verify what they witness amidst shutdowns and other attempts to silence their truth. Accordingly, our resources equip activists and journalists with strategies to prepare for disruptions, securely capture evidence, and preserve critical footage when connectivity is disrupted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While traditional OSINT methods often prioritize tools such as satellite imagery, GPS metadata, and automated geolocation, African practitioners have shown that these tools alone are not enough. In an article for the <\/span>Global Investigative Journalism Network<\/span><\/a>, WITNESS\u2019 Nkem Agunwa (Senior Africa Program Manager) and Georgia Edwards (Evidence and Investigations Program Coordinator) reflect on existing <\/span>gaps in the digital verification landscape<\/span><\/a>. According to Agunwa and Edwards, tool-based methodologies often fail to capture cultural nuances, linguistic cues, or contextual signals. This deficiency stems from their lack of local knowledge, which often can only be accurately identified by individuals deeply embedded within the community.<\/span> This model also seeks to challenge the pervasive epistemic exclusion that often sidelines community investigators in favor of foreign or Global North experts. While many breakthroughs in visual investigation depend on local contextual knowledge, the authority of that work is often acknowledged only after it has been filtered through institutional pipelines.<\/span><\/p>\n This model, which centers community expertise, local insight, and collaborative investigation, allows us to reimagine who gets to decide what is true, whose evidence is trustworthy, and how communities can defend their narratives in the face of denial and erasure.<\/span><\/p>\n Within the current media landscape, where synthetic media and misinformation are competing with the truth, newsrooms, civic groups, and community journalists must be supported to develop these capacities, without needing to wait for external validation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The experiences of Tanzania, Uganda, and neighbouring contexts like Kenya reveal two interlinked truths about digital politics in East Africa:<\/span><\/p>\n For democratic processes to be genuinely protected, access to information must be recognized as a human right with real political consequences. This means opposing internet shutdowns while also equipping citizens with tools to collect, verify, and share evidence, transforming digital footprints into public records of accountability.<\/span><\/p>\n By investing in local expertise, supporting community-based investigative methods, and defending open access to information, East African societies can reclaim the internet not as a tool of suppression but as a commons of truth, resilience, and democratic culture.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Freedom, Truth, and the Power to Speak Kenyan novelist and theorist Ng\u0169g\u0129 wa Thiong\u2019o argued that freedom is not merely the absence of physical chains, but the capacity to name, narrate, and control one\u2019s own story.\u00a0 Internet shutdowns have become a strategic tool by threat actors to erase memory and bury mass atrocities in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":363422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[3767,25583,7732,30857,1783,20579],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-363421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-blog","tag-defending","tag-democracy","tag-exposing","tag-power","tag-witness"],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Darkness: The Human Cost of Internet Shutdowns<\/b><\/h3>\n
<\/span><\/i>restrict internet access, further highlighting that Internet shutdowns are used to legitimize illegitimate leaders during elections.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nOSINT in Action: Documenting Violence and Countering Obfuscation<\/b><\/h3>\n
Internet as a Tool of Political Resilience<\/b><\/h3>\n
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<\/span>In contrast, WITNESS argues that <\/span>the power to verify human rights violations and fortify truths on the ground must be rooted in the knowledge, lived experience, and local expertise of the communities themselves<\/b>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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<\/span>Rather than relying on Global North institutions, WITNESS and its partners are <\/span>equipping local journalists and human rights defenders with the skills to conduct verification processes that are grounded in their own contexts<\/b>. These include geospatial analysis, data collection, archiving, open-source verification techniques, and evidence presentation tailored to the cultural and linguistic realities of the communities they serve.<\/span><\/p>\nBuilding Resilient Digital Futures Rooted in Evidence and Justice<\/b><\/h3>\n
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