For the sixth year, Algeria blocks internet nationwide to prevent cheating during final exams

Against what many Algerians hoped, Algeria resumed what's quickly becoming an annual ritual of blocking the internet nationwide to thwart a mass epidemic of cheating by students during final exams.

On Sunday, high school seniors in the North African state began their first day of baccalaureate exams, whose results widely shape a student's academic future.

At 8:30 am, as exam centres opened their doors, the internet went off. Access to social networks and instant messaging, key platforms which reportedly cheating students use to exchange answers to the exams, stopped working. 

Internet was temporarily restored Sunday between 12:30 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. before being cut again around 2:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.

"It's immature what they are doing. I could not get any work done today which will definitely cost me much," Ahmed, an Algerian freelancer graphic designer, told The New Arab on Sunday.

Many like Ahmed, missed deadlines for their projects or received a scolding frombosses overseas who did not believe that a country can shut down the internet over a high school exam.

"I wrote a long email explaining to my American boss that I could not work today or give an early notice because the internet was nationwide shut in my country. He thought I was not being serious," Amira, an Algerian web designer, told TNA.

The internet shutdown is set to continue until Thursday, 15 June.

Ahead of the baccalaureate exams, authorities warned of serious restrictions, although it did not explain the details.

Neither Algérie Télécom, the public monopoly of ADSL internet, nor the three mobile operators (Mobilis, Ooredoo and Djezzy) have communicated on these cuts and if any compensations will be paid for their customers.

Contacted by TNA, none of the officials from Algérie Telecom were available to comment.

This is the sixth year Algeria decides to block the internet, and their senior officials, say, unfortunately,  other solutions do not work. 

"We have to do this – it's a case of force majeure," the education minister, Nouria Benghabrit, told El Watan newspaper in 2018 when the country announced its first internet shutdown. "We realise a blackout is a big step. But we can't just do nothing."

This year, authorities refrained from commenting on the radical solution.

Cheating among the more than 700,000 students who take Algeria's baccalaureate was so widespread in 2016 that the education ministry declared several exams void and ordered more than 500,000 resits using new question papers.

To the delight of large numbers of latecomers, questions and answers had begun appearing on social media before or just after the start of each exam. Thirty-one people were arrested, including several education ministry employees.

After this debacle, in 2017 the ministry installed mobile phone jammers in Algeria's 2,100 exam centres and blocked access to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

But this was not completely effective, so the state decided to blackout the internet yearly during the exams period despite its people's frustration.

Algeria is not, however, the only country to take such radical steps during exam season: Syria, Iraq, Mauritania, and several Indian states reportedly block access to the internet.