This Thursday, a major internet outage affected West and Central Africa, according to observations from the Internet observatory Netblocks, which reported information from operators reporting several submarine cable failures. The exact cause of these failures remains unclear at this time.
According to Netblocks data, Ivory Coast was hit hard, while Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso also suffered significant impacts. Cloudflare, an internet company, confirmed significant ongoing 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 northern to southern Africa.
South African telecom operator Vodacom also blamed connectivity issues on submarine cable failures impacting the country’s network providers.
This internet outage raises questions about the fragility of digital infrastructure in West and Central Africa, highlighting the need to invest in backup solutions and network reinforcement to avoid such interruptions in the future.