(Bloomberg) -- Burkina Faso extended its nationwide shutdown of mobile internet access for 96 hours, as opposition groups prepared to protest Saturday against President Roch Marc Christian Kabore.
Residents of the West African nation have been cut off from the internet since last weekend. The government used a legal provision related to national defense and public security to prolong the outage, according to a government statement issued late Wednesday.
A group of opposition and civil society movements known as the November 27 Coalition has called for protests to demand Kabore’s resignation. Criticism of the 64-year-old president’s rule is intensifying as a widening Islamist insurgency in West Africa engulfs swathes of the gold-producing nation. The violence has left thousands of people dead and forced 1.4 million more to flee their homes.
Last week, at least 53 people died when suspected Islamist militants attacked a military position at Inata near the northern border with Mali. The attack, the deadliest on the nation’s security forces since Islamist violence began five years ago, triggered protests. About 120 gendarmes were stationed at the post that was running low on food supplies at the time of the raid, according to an internal military report verified by the army’s chief of staff.
Insurgents have also struck gold-mining operations -- the country’s main source of income. In June, 160 people -- many of them informal mine workers -- were killed in an attack on a village in northern Burkina Faso. In September and October, unidentified gunmen attacked Iamgold Corp. convoys on two separate occasions.
Public anger following the Inata attack was also directed at foreign troops in Burkina Faso, where French forces have been helping fight the insurgency. A French army convoy passing through the country en route to Niger on Nov. 20 was blocked by angry protesters in the village of Kaya. Several civilians were injured after troops opened fire to disperse protesters, Agence France-Presse reported on Nov. 21. The French military denied injuring any protesters.
The convoy eventually moved away from the crowd, but was still in Burkina Faso this week, according to a French army spokesman. Burkinabe authorities said they were investigating the weekend’s events.
Kabore came to power in 2015, a year after long-serving leader Blaise Compaore was ousted in a popular uprising. Kabore was re-elected in 2020. Governments in sub-Saharan Africa have been prone to ordering Internet service providers to shut their gateways or throttle data traffic when confronted with dissent.
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