A recent disruption in internet connectivity has caused widespread issues in East Africa, particularly impacting Kenya and Tanzania. The outage was attributed to unexpected faults in two vital submarine internet cables, Eassy and Seacom, which link South Africa to Kenya. These faults led to a significant reduction in internet services across various nations in the region.
Reports from Tanzania's Minister of Information, Communication, and Information Technology, Nape Nnauye, confirmed the disruption, stating that the cables' faults occurred between Mozambique and South Africa. Efforts to resolve the issue are ongoing, but it's anticipated that internet access and international voice calls will remain limited until the problem is fully addressed.
Ben Roberts, the group chief technology and information officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies, corroborated the severity of the situation, stating that internet services in East Africa were severely impaired due to the cable problems.
Locally, users in Kenya and Tanzania reported experiencing a severe impact on internet usage, with some areas facing near-total blackouts. According to reports from Netblocks and Cloudflare, Tanzania, Mayotte, Mozambique, Malawi, and Madagascar were significantly affected by the disruption, with users experiencing connectivity issues across major networks and internet service providers.
In response to the outage, Safaricom, Kenya's largest telecom operator, activated redundancy measures to minimize service interruptions. However, South African internet users appeared unaffected, as much of the country's internet traffic is routed through alternate cable systems along the west coast of Africa.
This recent event adds to a series of undersea cable disruptions experienced across Africa, reminiscent of the March 14, 2024, incident where four undersea telecommunications cables went offline near Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, affecting major internet services across the continent, including Nigeria and South Africa.
The timing of the East African cable faults compounds existing challenges, with three subsea cables in the Red Sea still unrepaired after sustaining damage in late February. These cables, including Seacom, EIG, and AAE-1, were severed following an incident involving a ship attacked by Houthi rebels, further exacerbating internet connectivity issues in the region.
Play audio
No comments