The authorities in South Sudan have denied shutting down the internet and blamed a "technical problem" for the outage, privately-owned Eye Radio reports.

“We have a technical problem that the engineers are working on; it has nothing to do with what is happening,” South Sudan government spokesperson Michael Makuei told Eye Radio, referring link to anti-government protests called for Monday.

Internet monitoring site, NetBlocks confirmed the internet disruption in South Sudan.

Activists have been accessing social media sites using Virtual Private Networks (VPN), according to Sudan Tribune news site.

Earlier this month, the People's Coalition for Civil Action - a coalition of civil society groups - called for protests to demand the resignation of President Salva Kiir and his government.

Several activists linked to the group have been arrested and a local radio has been shut down.

Although activists insisted the anti-government protests would still go ahead, there was no sign of them on the streets of Juba.