The citizens of Benin Republic can now heave sighs of relief as the government of Benin has decided to scrap its social media tax. The reversal on the tax was announced about a week ago.
The government of Benin had initially announced the tax in the first week of September requiring citizens to pay around $0.008 (5 CFA) per MegaByte of data used while using apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Instagram and many others.
However, this didn’t go down well with the citizens who took to the streets protesting the social media tax in different ways since its announcement.
Analyzing the social media tax, it meant that that mobile Internet costs became more expensive as it was a fee to be charged over and above the cost of purchasing data bundles to access the Internet.
The social media tax law or other forms of obnoxious gags on internet access are not peculiar to Benin Republic alone. Disturbingly, it is a growing trend among African countries like Cameroon, Uganda, Egypt, Tanzania,etc.
Interestingly, many of the citizens of these countries with regulated internet access have sought ways to bypass these taxes. For instance, according to reports by iAfrikan, Ugandans are circumventing the tax. In Benin, some citizens resorted to using Virtual Private Networks (VPN) to spoof their location and access social media platforms without being prompted to pay the tax.
Reportedly,Kenya is also looking to introduce a form of tax on Internet access, while the Ugandan government remains adamant on the social media law, neighboring Tanzania charges an exorbitant annual fee from anyone publishing content on the Internet.
According to observations, many of these fees and taxes are weapons in the hands of political leaders in power to choke publications and speeches against them and failure to comply might incur penalties like incarceration.
Hopefully, the positive developments from Benin will stir a wave of change in other African countries.
