A significant portion of West and Central Africa has experienced a widespread outage of internet services following reported failures in multiple subsea cables. The exact cause of these cable failures, which occurred on Thursday, remains unclear, causing disruptions to internet connectivity across the affected regions.
Seacom, a major African subsea cable operator, confirmed that its west African cable system was experiencing downtime. Affected customers were automatically rerouted to the Google Equiano cable, which Seacom utilizes, in an effort to mitigate the impact of the outage.
Isik Mater, director of research at NetBlocks, described the disruption as one of the most severe in recent years, pointing to potential broader issues underlying the current situation.
At least a dozen countries have been affected by the outage, with concerns rising over disruptions to essential services in worst-hit areas such as Ivory Coast. Countries including Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso experienced heavy disruption, exacerbating the impact on businesses and individuals reliant on internet services.
Cloudflare, a prominent internet infrastructure company, reported ongoing major disruptions in several countries, including the Gambia, Guinea, and Niger. Namibia and Lesotho were also among the affected nations.
South African telecoms operator Vodacom attributed connectivity problems to undersea cable failures, further complicating efforts to restore internet services across the region.
As networks attempt to circumvent the damage caused by cable failures, the capacity available to other countries may be significantly reduced. Mater emphasized that while the initial disruption may stem from physical damage to the cables, subsequent technical issues could exacerbate the situation, prolonging the outage and its impact on internet users in the affected regions.
