On March 14, more than a dozen African countries experienced Internet outages due to damage to submarine optical cables along the West African coastline. The impact was severe and financial services were severely disrupted. The most affected are Ghana, Liberia, Benin and Côte d’Ivoire, with internet connectivity rates of 25%, 17%, 14% and 4% respectively.
Affected service providers include the West African Cable System and the African Coast to Europe, which experienced outages, as well as SAT3 and MainOne, which experienced outages.
These cables total more than 1.4 million kilometers and are spread across the world’s oceans, with France, the United States and Japan being the main suppliers. Egypt has the largest number of submarine cables reaching the African continent, with 15, according to Submarine Networks. This is followed by South Africa and Djibouti with 11, while Nigeria, Cameroon and Kenya have six each.
Although the scale of the incident is unprecedented in Africa, cables being cut are relatively common. On average, approximately 100 such incidents occur each year. Most service providers try to avoid single points of failure by spreading network capacity across multiple cables as backup, which is why you don’t hear about them that often. The most common cause of cable failure is human activity. However, MainOne ruled out human activity as the cause of the internet outage in Africa, saying it was caused by “some form of seismic activity under the sea.”
Estimates of when full service will be restored vary. Ghana’s National Communications Authority (NCA) said it could take up to five weeks to complete the repairs.
Some internet users in Nigeria observed that some Google services, such as YouTube, remained accessible during the outage. Mobile network Globacom also announced that it was not affected by the outage. Meanwhile, the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has revealed that internet services are currently at 90% capacity.
In South Africa, four submarine cables went down simultaneously. Load shedding challenges coupled with internet outages make Starlink an attractive alternative for South African customers as it does not use terrestrial or undersea backhaul infrastructure.
While the current productivity and financial losses due to outages may not be quantifiable, a silver lining may be that it sheds light on the importance of building a stronger internet infrastructure on the continent.