Internet outage intensifies in West and Central Africa

A major internet disruption hit West and Central Africa on Thursday, the internet observatory Netblocks said, citing reports from operators of multiple subsea cable failures.

The cause of the cable failures was not immediately clear.

Telecommunications companies and banks in Nigeria have been hit by an internet outage as a result of damage to international undersea cables supplying them with connectivity. 

 BusinessWorld Intelligence gathered that the damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and is causing downtime across West and South African countries.

The West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3 cables are affected. 

Some bank networks in Nigeria have been down and unable to process transactions as a result of the internet outage. Telecom subscribers, especially, those of MTN have also been complaining of poor data experience since Thursday morning.  

Responding to its customers’ complaints over the poor internet connectivity being experienced, MTN has issued a statement explaining the cause. The company said: 

“We apologize for the challenges you may be experiencing with internet speed and accessing data services at the moment. “This is a result of damage to international undersea cables across East & West Africa. The repair process is ongoing to resolve the situation as soon as possible. Please look out for further updates.” 

In the banking space, Sterling Bank is one of the banks hit by cable damage as the bank’s network was shut down and could not process any transactions.

A visit to one of the bank’s branches in the Ogba area of Lagos State confirmed this as all customers attempting to enter the bank’s hall were being turned back. 

When asked the reason, one of the staff of the bank said:  

 Ivory Coast was experiencing a severe outage, while Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso were seeing a high impact, Netblocks's data showed.

Internet firm Cloudflare said on one of its X accounts that monitors trends that major internet disruptions were ongoing in Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin and Niger.

"There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa," Cloudflare Radar said.

South African telecoms operator Vodacom also blamed connectivity issues on undersea cable failures affecting the country's network providers.