Kenya scored 52 out of 100 in a brand new international web freedom rating printed by Cloudwards on twenty first March 2026, inserting it alongside the UK, Brazil, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, and Zambia. That isn’t a snug grouping for a rustic that has lengthy positioned itself as East Africa’s digital chief.
The research, titled “Mapped: Web Freedom by Nation in 2026,” ranked 171 nations on a 0-to-100 scale utilizing knowledge from OONI Explorer, Freedom Home, authorities notices, courtroom rulings, and regulatory disclosures. It assessed 4 classes: whether or not torrent websites are accessible, whether or not grownup content material is restricted or banned, whether or not political and civic expression on-line is free, and whether or not VPN providers are authorized and accessible.
A rating of 52 places Kenya squarely within the mid-table of world web freedom. Not catastrophic. However not good both, and critically, not bettering.
What the research truly measured
You will need to perceive what this rating is and what it isn’t. Cloudwards constructed its personal scoring methodology. It isn’t the identical as Freedom Home’s annual “Freedom on the Web” report, though Cloudwards used Freedom Home knowledge as certainly one of its inputs.
Freedom Home’s most up-to-date evaluation, printed in November 2025, gave Kenya a rating of 58 out of 100, down from 64 the earlier yr. That six-point drop was the only largest decline of any nation assessed globally in 2025, pushed primarily by the web shutdown in the course of the #RejectFinanceBill protests in June 2024, the blocking of Telegram, arrests and disappearances of on-line activists, and ongoing surveillance considerations.
Cloudwards’ rating of 52 for Kenya is decrease than Freedom Home’s 58, as a result of the methodologies differ. Cloudwards weights classes like torrent website entry and grownup content material entry equally alongside political expression and VPN legality, whereas Freedom Home makes use of 21 indicators throughout three broader classes (obstacles to entry, limits on content material, and violations of person rights). Neither rating is unsuitable. They’re measuring barely various things. However each inform the identical story: Kenya’s web freedom is middling and getting worse.
The Kenya-UK comparability is actual, however the causes are completely different
The headline comparability, Kenya and the UK sharing a rating of 52, is placing however requires context.
The UK loses factors for causes that look very completely different from Kenya’s. Britain’s On-line Security Act, which started enforcement in late 2024, requires platforms to take away unlawful and dangerous content material and has launched age verification necessities that prohibit how adults entry sure classes of on-line materials. In January 2025, the Dwelling Workplace reportedly ordered Apple to create a technical backdoor for encrypted knowledge, main Apple to withdraw its end-to-end encryption function for UK iCloud customers. Over 12,000 folks have been arrested in 2023 beneath communications legal guidelines, together with for social media posts, in response to Freedom of Data knowledge printed by The Instances. And false data circulating on-line contributed to far-right riots throughout greater than two dozen British cities in August 2024.
Kenya’s rating, however, displays a distinct set of issues. The nation skilled its first confirmed web shutdown in June 2024, lasting roughly seven hours throughout anti-Finance Invoice protests. Telegram has been repeatedly blocked throughout KCSE examination intervals in 2023 and 2024, with no official acknowledgement or authorized justification from both the federal government or Safaricom. Civil society organisations have documented arrests, abductions, and disappearances of on-line activists and critics. And a landmark lawsuit filed by seven civil society teams in Could 2025 is at the moment difficult the constitutionality of state-driven web shutdowns, with the Excessive Courtroom granting conservatory orders in opposition to additional disruptions.
Each nations rating 52. One is coping with the results of over-regulation and surveillance creep in a mature democracy. The opposite is coping with opaque shutdowns, unexplained platform blocking, and punitive responses to political expression. The quantity is similar. The implications aren’t.
The place Africa stands
No African nation reached the research’s prime tier. The eleven nations that scored 92, the best within the rating, span 4 continents however Africa will not be amongst them: Belgium, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Slovakia, Suriname, and Timor-Leste maintain these spots.
Africa’s finest performers are Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, and Seychelles, all on 84 factors. That locations them within the second tier globally, alongside nations like Canada, Switzerland, Poland, and Uruguay. It’s a sturdy displaying, even when it falls in need of the very prime bracket.
Beneath them, Africa spreads throughout a remarkably big selection. Benin, Gambia, Liberia, Madagascar, Namibia, and Niger scored 76. Ghana, at 72, sits alongside Italy, Mexico, and Spain. Botswana, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa landed on 64, the identical tier as the US, Japan, Australia, and France.
Then the scores drop sharply. Rwanda and Cameroon scored 56. Kenya, as famous, sits at 52 alongside Zambia. Algeria and Burkina Faso are at 48. Ethiopia scored 36. Tanzania and Libya are at 28. Uganda scored 24. And on the backside of Africa’s vary, Egypt and Sudan each scored 12 out of 100, inserting them among the many worst-performing nations globally.
This unevenness is the only most necessary takeaway from the African knowledge. There isn’t a single “African web freedom” story. Cape Verde at 84 and Egypt at 12 are on the identical continent however in solely completely different digital realities.
The worldwide image
On the very backside of the rankings, North Korea scored 0. Most of its residents don’t have any entry to the worldwide web in any respect, restricted as an alternative to Kwangmyong, a tightly managed nationwide intranet. Russia, Pakistan, Iran, and China every scored 4.
Cloudwards famous that torrenting is essentially the most universally restricted class worldwide. No nation scored “totally accessible” for torrent websites, that means that even the highest-scoring nations impose some stage of restriction on torrenting, usually by copyright enforcement moderately than political censorship.
The research additionally highlighted that a number of European nations, together with some with in any other case sturdy scores, have been marked as having restrictions on political and civic on-line expression. Austria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, and Slovenia have been all flagged beneath this class regardless of scoring 84 general.
What this implies for Kenya
For readers who’ve adopted our reporting on this topic, none of that is shocking. We’ve documented the Telegram shutdowns throughout KCSE exams in 2023 and 2024, the $27 million financial value of these disruptions, the civil society lawsuit that secured a Excessive Courtroom order in opposition to future shutdowns, the digital blackout in the course of the June 2025 anniversary protests, and the broader query of whether or not smartphones and social media are Kenya’s final defence in opposition to state violence.
What the Cloudwards research provides is international context. Kenya will not be an outlier. It’s a part of a worldwide sample the place governments, together with these in democracies, are discovering new methods to limit digital entry, typically by regulation, typically by infrastructure management, and typically by sheer opacity.
The troubling half for Kenya is the trajectory. The nation went from a Freedom Home rating of 64 to 58 in a single yr, the steepest decline globally. The Cloudwards methodology locations Kenya even decrease, at 52. The path of journey is evident, and it isn’t upward.
What makes this notably consequential for East Africa’s digital economic system is that web freedom will not be an summary human rights metric. It’s an financial one. Each hour of complete web shutdown prices Kenya roughly KES 1.8 billion in GDP, in response to NetBlocks. The repeated, unannounced Telegram disruptions throughout examination intervals affected tens of millions of Safaricom subscribers conducting authentic enterprise, not simply college students sharing examination papers. And the absence of transparency, no courtroom orders, no official statements, no accountability, creates regulatory uncertainty that impacts each know-how firm, investor, and digital entrepreneur working within the Kenyan market.
Kenya can’t place itself as a digital economic system hub whereas concurrently deploying opaque web restrictions with out authorized foundation. These two ambitions are incompatible, and the worldwide knowledge now confirms what native reporting has been saying for years.
The complete Cloudwards research is on the market at cloudwards.web/internet-censorship.
Associated
