The internet no doubt has its shortcomings. A common problem governments and its agencies, especially in Africa, are finding it difficult to tackle is cheating. This is because more and more students are using it to cheat during exams.
This is what prompted the Ethiopian government to shut down the internet thereby blocking the leakage of papers for the country’s grade 10 examinations.
Google’s transparency report registered a sharp drop in national visits to the search engine which coincided with the lead-up to the nation’s year 10 and 12 school and university exams.
It’s the third time there will be an internet blackout in the country. In July 2016, the government blocked a significant amount of traffic after university entrance exams were posted online and another block followed in August of that year.
Commenting on the blackout, the deputy communications minister Zadig Abrha simply told AFP that “Mobile data has been deactivated.” He declined to give more details.
The trend for shutting down the internet due to examinations started with Algeria in June last year when the North African country blocked access to social media.
We hope other African countries will not catch the fever of shutting down the internet for national exams. Creative solutions should be found be evolved or developed with the problem.
