Benin has become the latest African country to impose levies on citizens’ access to the internet in a growing trend across the continent.
According to Quartz Africa,the government passed a decree in late August taxing its citizens for accessing the internet and social-media apps. The directive, first proposed in July, institutes a fee (link in French) of 5 CFA francs ($0.008) per megabyte consumed through services like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter. It also introduces a 5% fee, on top of taxes, on texting and calls, according to advocacy group Internet Sans Frontières (ISF).
The latest development has however not settled well with the citizens and advocates who have remonstrated using the hashtag #Taxepamesmo (“Don’t tax my megabytes”) to call on officials to cancel the levy.
According to ISF’s executive director Julie Owono, the hike in fees will not only burden the poorest consumers and widen the digital divide, but they will also be “disastrous” for the nation’s nascent digital economy. In response to the imposed levies, a petition on Change.org has garnered nearly 7,000 signatures since it was created five days ago.
The list of African nations imposing levies on citizens for internet access has continued to increase despite series of backlashes from citizens and advocates. Just last month, Zambia approved a tax on internet calls in order to protect large telcos at the expense of already squeezed citizens. Also, in July, Uganda also introduced a tax for accessing 60 websites and social-media apps, including WhatsApp and Twitter, from mobile phones. Officials in Kampala also increased excise duty fees on mobile-money transactions from 10% to 15%, in a bid to reduce capital flight and improve the country’s tax-to-GDP ratio. Cameroon is not left out while Egypt also has followed suit.
According to digital-rights advocates, these draconian moves are part of wider moves to silence critics and the vibrant socio-political, cultural, and economic conversations taking place online. The adoptions of these taxes, they say, could have a costly impact not just on democracy and social cohesion, but on economic growth, innovation, and net neutrality.
According to Quartz Africa, Paradigm Initiative, a Nigerian company that works to advance digital rights, has said it was worried Nigeria would follow Uganda’s and Zambia’s footsteps and start levying over-the-top media services like Facebook and Telegram that deliver content on the internet.
These levies have been observed to have negative impact on these nation’s economies in the long run. Uganda for instance could lose $750 million in revenue this year alone.
