Mozambique’s Constitutional Council, the country’s highest authority on constitutional and electoral matters, has ruled that a government decree allowing authorities to shut down the internet is unconstitutional, striking out the legal basis officials have used to justify restricting access.
The ruling, delivered on July 31, 2026, found that the Telecommunications Traffic Control Regulation (Decree No. 48/2025) went beyond the government’s constitutional authority. Under the decree, the National Communications Institute of Mozambique (INCM) could suspend internet and telecommunications services, monitor communications, and collect user data whenever it judged there to be a risk to public or state security.
The Council’s objection wasn’t that shutdowns are inherently unlawful. It was that only parliament, not an executive decree, can create rules restricting rights this fundamental: freedom of expression, privacy, and the confidentiality of communications.
A decree written after a court had already said no
This isn’t the first time Mozambique’s institutions have pushed back on internet restrictions, and that history is why the ruling is being read cautiously rather than as a clean win.
During the country’s post-election crisis in October and November 2024, mobile networks blocked internet access and restricted social media for weeks. Civil society groups, including the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD), took mobile operators Movitel, Vodacom, and Tmcel to court over the continued restrictions and won a ruling in their favour in early December 2024.
The government’s response wasn’t to step back from the practice. A year later, in December 2025, it approved the very decree the Constitutional Council has now struck down, formally granting itself powers a court had just ruled against in effect. CDD framed the sequence directly in a statement reported by CPJ: rather than learning from the 2024 episode, the government treated it as the reason to write the power into law.
That history is also why CDD isn’t treating this ruling as the end of the matter. Its director has signalled the organisation will keep pursuing every legal and constitutional route available if the government continues restricting access, which reads less like a victory lap and more like a group bracing for another round.
Whether parliament fills the gap
The ruling doesn’t ban shutdowns outright. It only blocks the government from authorising them through decree. Parliament could still pass legislation granting similar powers, and nothing in the judgement stops officials from pursuing that route. Whether Mozambique’s government moves to legislate, quietly disregards the ruling, or lets the matter sit is a question the court can’t answer for it, and the government hasn’t yet said which way it’s leaning.
A fight over access in a country where few have it
The battle over who controls Mozambique’s internet is playing out in a country where most citizens don’t have a connection to lose. Just 19.8% of the population was online at the start of 2025, and the Ministry of Communications and Digital Transformation attributes the gap largely to high data costs and limited broadband coverage outside major cities.
Victoria Fakiya – Senior Writer
Techpoint Digest
Stop struggling to find your tech career path
Discover in-demand tech skills and build a standout portfolio in this FREE 5-day email course
Shutdowns during elections and unrest have become a recurring feature across the continent. Uganda ordered a nationwide shutdown shortly before its general election in January 2026, and Kenya’s High Court barred its government, regulator, and telecom operators from disrupting access back in May 2025. Mozambique’s ruling adds to that small list of African court interventions on the issue.
The economic case against shutdowns is also building. Sub-Saharan Africa lost $1.5 billion to internet shutdowns in 2024 alone, a cost that falls hardest on economies with the least room to absorb it.
For now, Mozambique’s Constitutional Council has done what courts can do: draw a legal line around one specific decree. Whether that line holds depends on what the government, not the judiciary, decides to do next.
