The government of Tanzania has a passed a law requiring that mobile phones should have passwords. The regulations stipulate that failure to have a mobile phone password would land someone in prison for one year or liable for a fine of Tsh. 5 million.
The regulations also state that bloggers and online content creators would be required to apply for licenses in order to be allowed to post their content online.
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The government said that the social media users have brought this regulations upon themselves as they did not observe ethical guidelines that had been set while publishing their own material.
Many blogs within the country will definitely shut down as they will not afford the required fee to have a license.
“First, the fees which we are supposed to pay for the license applications and annual subscriptions are way beyond earnings of many bloggers… I am sure many will not afford the fees,” Krants Mwantepele, Secretary General of the Tanzania Bloggers Network said.
An activist from the Legal and human Rights Center (LHRC)Mr Raphael Ngonde said that the regulations were not consistent with provisions in the constitution.
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