After the repair and restoration of four subsea cables; West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3, internet connectivity has again, been disrupted in several East and Southern African nations, according to internet observatory Netblocks. The outages were linked to failures affecting the SEACOM and EASSy subsea cable systems.

Tanzania and the French island of Mayotte were experiencing a high impact on internet connectivity, while Mozambique and Malawi were seeing a medium impact. Madagascar was also affected.

Tanzania’s Minister of Information, Communication, and Information Technology, Nape Nnauye, stated that the government was informed of the disruption by EASSy and SEACOM. “There are ongoing efforts to solve the problem,” he said. “As they continue to solve the problem, we will have very low access to internet and international voice calls.”

Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecoms operator, activated redundancy measures to minimize service interruption after being notified of the outage. Efforts to resolve the issue are ongoing. Further updates will be provided as more information becomes available.

March 14, 2024, a similar outage affected 13 African countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Burkina Faso, causing either degraded services or near-total Internet outages.

The recent disruptions to critical subsea cables underscore the pressing need to overcome vulnerabilities and strengthen Africa’s digital infrastructure. Key stakeholders, including both private and public sectors across Africa, must collaborate with private companies and international organizations to address this challenge. Increased investment in digital infrastructure development is key but protection of existing infrastructure is more crucial. Without sustainable digital infrastructure, Africa may be unable to harness its advantages in a global digital economy.