Two months ago, about ten Central and West African countries experienced an internet disruption for several days. The inconvenience has occurred again.

Internet services have been disrupted in several East African countries since Sunday, May 12. NetBlocks, a British organization that monitors internet restrictions worldwide, attributes the incident to failures in the SEACOM and EASSY submarine cable systems serving the region. According to NetBlocks, the disruptions impact millions of users, including in Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Burundi, Rwanda, Madagascar, Comoros, Uganda, Somalia, and Kenya. Sierra Leone, a West African country, is also slightly affected by these disruptions.

This marks the second occurrence this year of internet disruptions in Africa due to incidents involving submarine cables that serve the continent. In March, similar outages affected the WACS, MainOne, ACE, SAT3, Seacom/TGN, AAE1, and EIG cables, impacting a number of West, Central, and Southern African countries. Some of these cables have yet to be repaired.

In the affected countries, efforts are underway to address the situation, involving both telecom operators and Internet service providers, as well as public authorities. Nape Moses Nnauye, the Tanzanian Minister of ICT, stated, “There are ongoing efforts to solve the problem. As they continue to solve the problem, we will have very low access to internet and international voice calls.” 

Isaac K. Kassouwi