Countries such as Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso are among those experiencing internet outages
Large parts of West and Central Africa are currently without internet service due to reported failures in several subsea cables. The cause of these failures on Thursday remains unclear.
Seacom, an African subsea cable operator, confirmed that its west African cable system was affected, leading to customers being rerouted to the Google Equiano cable, which Seacom utilizes. “The redirection happens automatically when a route is impacted,” Seacom explained in an email.
In recent years, Africa has experienced network disruptions due to cable damage. However, today’s disruption is seen as more significant. Isik Mater, the director of research at NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet disruptions globally, stated that this disruption “points to something larger” and is “amongst the most severe.”
NetBlocks reported that data transmission and measurement indicated a major disruption to international transits, likely occurring at or near the landing points of the subsea network cables.
The outage has impacted at least twelve countries, raising concerns about the disruption of vital services in the most affected areas, such as Ivory Coast, where the impact was severe.
Africa has a higher percentage of internet traffic on mobile devices than any other continent, and many businesses depend on the internet to provide services to their customers.
According to Netblocks, which monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso were among the hardest-hit countries.
In a post on X, the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare stated that significant internet disruptions were ongoing in Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, and Niger. Namibia and Lesotho were also impacted.
Cloudflare Radar noted a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, affecting regions from the north to the south of Africa.
South African telecoms operator Vodacom attributed connectivity issues to undersea cable failures that affected South Africa’s network providers.
According to Mater, the impact of such cable failures intensifies as networks try to reroute around the damage, which could potentially reduce the capacity available to other countries.
“The initial disruption may be due to a physical cut, but subsequent issues could be technical in nature,” she added.
