Internet blackout hits eight African countries
Internet observatory Netblocks reported a major internet blackout West and Central Africa on March 14th, according to Reuters.
Operators of four subsea cables reported failures, although the cause of the outage was not immediately clear.
African subsea cable operator SEACOM confirmed that services went down on its West African cable system, and that customers were directed to Google’s Equiano cable, which SEACOM uses.
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Bloomberg reported that a spokesperson from internet analytics firm Cloudflare stated that “repairs can take weeks to months, depending on where the damage is, what needs to be repaired, and local weather conditions,” and that “the assignment of repair ships depends on a number of factors, including ownership of the impacted cables.”
Netblocks data showed that Ivory Coast experienced a severe internet blackout, with Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso also impacted.
Cloudflare confirmed via X that major internet disruptions occurred in Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, and Niger, and that “there seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa.”
Vodacom, a South African telecoms operator, also blamed connectivity issues on undersea cable failures impacting the country’s network providers.
Reuters / Bloomberg
