N'Djamena, Chad -                          After more than 12 months, since social media was banned and blocked in Chad, the country can now have access the different social platforms.

This comes after President Idriss Deby, speaking in a digital technology symposium in the capital city N'Djamena, noted that he had instructed all Internet Service Providers in Chad to lift the social media restrictions that he had instructed to be blocked, since March 2018.

The restrictions were implemented following protests during March 2018 after a conference was held in Chad where one of the resolutions was that the country’s constitution would be amended in order to allow Deby to remain in in his position until 2033.

During the announcement lifting the social media restrictions, Deby is reported to have appealed “to everyone’s sense of responsibility so that these means of communication are an instrument of development and not a source of division.”

Although it could have been argued that the social media restrictions in Chad should have been easy to bypass by using a virtual private network (VPN) client, one needs to remember that not every citizen is familiar with what they would consider something too complicated to use such as a VPN.

Hence, the social media shutdown persisted for a period of over one year and affected the majority of people in Chad.

#iAfrikan