Widespread Internet Outages Strike East Africa, Impacting Millions

Widespread Internet Outages Strike East Africa, Impacting Millions

East Africa is currently grappling with significant internet connectivity issues that have disrupted daily life and business operations across several countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda.

The disruptions have been attributed to faults in the undersea cables which are crucial for connecting the region to the global internet network.

Industry experts have pinpointed the source of the problem to damages in the undersea cables situated off the coast of South Africa.

Ben Roberts, a prominent figure in the telecommunications industry and a representative from Liquid Intelligent Technologies, explained to the BBC that the disruptions followed the severance of the Eassy cable, which occurred approximately 45 kilometers north of Durban, South Africa.

This critical cable runs along the East African coast and is pivotal for the region’s internet connectivity.

Roberts dismissed the likelihood of sabotage, suggesting the cut was an unfortunate happenstance, coinciding with another cable cut, further exacerbating the connectivity issues.

He assured that efforts were underway to reroute data through other cables linking East Africa to Europe, which might alleviate some of the ongoing disruptions.

The impact of the outage has been severe across affected countries, with Cloudflare Radar reporting that internet traffic in Tanzania plummeted to just 30% of its usual levels, leading local media to describe the situation as an “internet blackout” affecting major network channels.

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The connectivity issues have also reached Malawi, Mozambique, and Madagascar, highlighting the widespread nature of the problem.

Telecommunication companies across the region have been inundated with complaints and queries from distressed and frustrated customers.

On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Airtel Kenya responded to a customer’s inquiry about watching a major football match, stating that their team was addressing the “network issue” and extended their apologies.

Similarly, Safaricom in Kenya acknowledged the challenges they were facing, describing it as a “challenge.”

In Uganda, Airtel described the internet service as “intermittent,” and MTN Rwanda reported “an issue of degradation of international links,” confirming that the problem was not isolated to a single country.

This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. In March, similar outages were reported across West and Southern Africa, affecting countries including South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana among others.

Those outages, also linked to cable failures, caused widespread inconvenience and economic disruptions.

The repeated nature of these incidents underscores the vulnerability of Africa’s internet infrastructure to undersea cable damages.

As many big companies have data centers in South Africa, any damage to a critical link like Eassy can have a disproportionate impact, affecting not just national but regional online activities.

As companies and governments scramble to restore connectivity, the ongoing situation highlights the need for robust infrastructure and the potential benefits of diversifying connectivity sources to mitigate such risks in the future.

As the region waits for the restoration of full connectivity, the economic implications are likely to be significant, given the reliance on the internet for various services and business operations.

The incident serves as a wake-up call for an evaluation of the continent’s digital infrastructure to prevent such occurrences from becoming a recurrent issue.

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