March 14, (THEWILL)- A major internet outage disrupted businesses across West, Central and South Africa on Thursday.
Reports from the internet observatory Netblocks indicate multiple subsea cable failures.
Thursday’s internet outage extends beyond Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Gambia among others. South African internet users also experienced slow speeds and unresponsive internet.
According to news24, Vodacom confirmed that multiple subsea cable failures between South Africa and Europe were impacting several network providers. Several other submarine cables such as AAE1, and EIG, also suffered outages across Africa.
According to Netblocks data, Ivory Coast faced a severe outage, while Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso experienced significant impacts.
Cloudflare, an internet firm, confirmed major disruptions in Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, and Niger through one of its monitoring accounts.
Cloudflare Radar noted a discernible pattern in the timing of these disruptions, affecting regions from the north to the south of Africa.
Seacom, a South African internet connectivity provider, told its customers that it is experiencing a service-affecting outage via the West African Cable System, a submarine network.
MainOne, a major internet provider for most Nigerian banks and internet providers, also suffered a major fibre cut in Ghana that has knocked many major Nigerian banks offline, according to internal communication sent to bank staff. As a result, customers of major Nigerian banks were unable to access their banking apps or use any USSD service.
In a message to its customers on Thursday, Sterling Bank said some online banking activities have been “experiencing difficulties”.
Lemfi, an African remittance startup, also informed customers that it was experiencing a downtime.
“Traffic is currently being rerouted via alternate paths, with no current congestion. However, services towards Europe from Maputo and South Africa are at risk should the alternate paths fail,” a statement from Seacom said.
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