Best VPNs for Ethiopia

Using an Ethiopian IP

Ethiopia suffers from a severe lack of modernization in many areas, its internet technology included. At the end of 2017 only 15.3% of the population – 16 million people – had access to the internet. The reason for this is the overall rural nature of the country and its general poverty. Most Ethiopians cannot afford a home connection and instead visit the local internet cafe, but even those are also few and far between, limited to the capital and some of the larger cities. To make matters worse, the bandwidth has plummeted over the past year instead of increasing; the best speed the country has ever achieved is 4MB/s, but outside the capital it’s common to see the connection crawl at just 95KB/s.

Ethiopian online privacy laws

Internet censorship in Ethiopia

Ethiopian authorities are highly suspicious of the internet, seeing it as a den for opposing political parties, critics and terrorists. The country’s oppressive nature was revealed to the world when the government disrupted regular internet access in wake of student protests over the death of innocent civilians. Citizens were unable to access their social media accounts or use online communication tools like Skype. In fact, Voice over Internet Protocol applications remain heavily restricted to this very day. Tor has also reported that EthioTelecom uses deep packet inspection to prevent users from accessing the service.

Unfortunately censorship isn’t the only thing that Ethiopian netizens need to deal with, as the government has started to spy on them as well, thanks to statewide surveillance spyware called FinFisher. Intelligence agencies are keeping a close eye on bloggers and they are entitled to block internet access for anyone that they feel is doing something illegal. Furthermore, internet cafes are part of the spy network as they secretly track user login credentials and the owner of the establishment is forced to report anything suspicious otherwise they face a potential jail sentence. This surveillance means that users aren’t even safe on their own computer, with rumors flying around that the government watchdogs are capable of turning the device’s camera and microphone against you.

Circumventing censorship in Ethiopia

Installing a VPN on your computer or smartphone is pretty much a necessity, regardless of whether you are an inhabitant or just a visitor. The government’s reaction to the student protests demonstrated that authorities aren’t above of pulling the plug on the internet to prevent bad press from spreading. During the incident people had to rely on a VPN to dissolve the regional block, but unfortunately very few citizens knew about this trick.

Connecting to a virtual private network not only unlocks geo-restricted content but also provides privacy for bloggers and journalists. On the downside they’ll be only able to set it up on their own devices as such an act would raise an alarm bell at an internet cafe. Remember, however, that the restrictive bandwidth of the country would only slow the connection speed down even more.

Free Ethiopian VPN trials

Finding a suitable VPN provider is vital when dealing with a country whose internet connection is as problematic as Ethiopia’s. Generally speaking the company should have a server in the region to grant a masked IP without generating too much ping, but the presence of features such as a kill switch or a free trial is welcomed as well.

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