Sad start to the new year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

On December 30th, 2018, during the presidential election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), internet access was shut down. This disruption continued as the results were published. The bandwidth drop started just before midday on December 31st and has remained low since then. Around 6.21% of DRC's population has internet access, with many using limited and expensive satellite connections that were not affected by this shutdown. This is not the first time such an event has occurred in the country; a similar incident happened less than a year ago. The Congolese government plans to restore internet access after election results are published on January 6th. Cloudflare's Project Galileo and Athenian Project aim to protect vulnerable websites from cyber attacks, supporting principles for an open internet.