The internet has been disrupted in several African countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. The cause of the cable failures that led to these outages is not yet clear. According to Cloudflare Radar, there has been a pattern in the timing of the disruptions impacting countries from the north to the south of Africa.
In Ivory Coast, internet connectivity dropped to around just 4% on Thursday morning according to Netblocks, a cybersecurity and internet connectivity tracker. Liberia, Benin, and Ghana also experienced significant drops in internet connectivity. In South Africa, Vodacom reported intermittent connectivity issues due to multiple undersea cable failures. A fault was also reported on the MainOne cable system serving Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos.
The Liberian government confirmed internet disruption from Thursday morning, impacting citizens’ ability to access basic internet services such as social media and international bank transfers. This has had a significant impact on people’s lives and businesses. People like Benjamin Garkpah and Fatumata Barry expressed their frustration with the situation.
The Liberia Telecommunications Authority attributed the disruption to an incident involving the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine communications cable in Ivory Coast. In Ghana, multiple undersea cable disruptions were responsible for the outage. Cloudflare noted on social media that major internet disruptions were ongoing in several other African countries, including The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau
