Massive Africa internet outage could take weeks to fix

Disruption to internet services for millions of users in Africa could take weeks or even months to fix, following damage to undersea cables off the continent’s west coast.

Eight West African countries were suffering a second day of major connectivity issues on Friday with users in South Africa also affected, following damage to four subsea cables . The cause of the cable cutting was still not known, though a shifting of the seabed was among the likely possibilities.

“Repairs can take weeks to months, depending on where the damage is, what needs to be repaired, and local weather conditions,” said a spokesman at internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare. “The assignment of repair ships depends on a number of factors, including ownership of the impacted cables.”

The assignment of repair ships depends on a number of factors, including ownership of the impacted cables

The West Africa Cable System (Wacs), MainOne, Sat-3 and Ace sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected on Thursday and Friday.

MTN Group — one of the largest wireless carriers in Africa – said that Ace and Wacs have jointly initiated the repair process, and that they would send a vessel to fix the damaged cables.

Orange Marine said the firm was one of the specialist companies that would be involved in the repair operations for the cables, adding that other companies are also involved in efforts to restore the various cables. It said the repair time is not yet known.

Data shows a major disruption to connectivity in eight West African countries, with Ivory Coast, Liberia and Benin being the most affected, NetBlocks, an internet watchdog, said in a post on X. Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon are among other countries impacted. Several companies have also reported service disruptions in South Africa.

‘Devastating blow’

“This is a devastating blow to internet connectivity along the west coast of Africa, which will be operating in a degraded state for weeks to come,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis firm Kentik.

Ghana’s National Communications Authority said cable disruptions also occurred in Senegal and Portugal.

“This has led to a significant degradation of data services across the country, with mobile network operators working around the clock to restore full services,” the authority said.

Read: Microsoft expects full Africa cable break mitigation soon

The cable faults off Ivory Coast come less than a month after three telecoms cables were severed in the Red Sea, highlighting the vulnerability of critical communications infrastructure. The anchor of a cargo ship sunk by Houthi militants was probably responsible, according to assessments by the US and cable industry group the Internet Cable Protection Committee.

The Red Sea is a critical telecoms route, connecting Europe to Africa and Asia via Egypt.

Together, the problems with cables on either side of the continent create a capacity crunch, with customers of those cables scrambling to find alternative routes.

The Sophie Germain, one of the repair ships tasked with fixing broken subsea cables around Africa

Microsoft reported disruptions to its cloud services and Microsoft 365 applications across Africa. The Downdetector website showed that a number of companies in South Africa were still severely affected on Friday, including Microsoft and Nedbank.

Telkom’s Openserve fibre unit and Standard Bank were also affected, they said in statement, with Openserve adding it had rerouted traffic.

Read: Meet the Sophie Germain: R1-billion ship will help fix African subsea cables

Even Mauritius experienced outages, with Mauritius Telecom having to arrange to redirect traffic to other cables, it said.

Last year, Wacs and Sat-3 were damaged near the mouth of the Congo River following an undersea landslide. The loss of the cables knocked out international traffic travelling along the west coast of Africa and took about a month to repair. — Loni Prinsloo, Olivia Solon and Moses Mozart Dzawu, with Mpho Hlakudi, Alister Bull and Emele Onu, (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP

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