Damage to four subsea cables off the west coast of Africa is disrupting internet services across the continent.
The West Africa Cable System, MainOne, South Atlantic 3 and ACE sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected on Thursday and early Friday, triggering outages and connectivity issues for a second day for mobile operators and internet service providers, according to data from internet-analysis firms including NetBlocks, Kentik and Cloudflare. The cause of the cable faults has not yet been determined.
Data show a major disruption to connectivity in eight West African countries, with Ivory Coast, Liberia and Benin being the most affected, NetBlocks, an internet watchdog, said in a post on X. Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon are among other countries impacted. Several companies have also reported service disruptions in South Africa.
“This is a devastating blow to internet connectivity along the west coast of Africa, which will be operating in a degraded state for weeks to come,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis firm Kentik.
Ghana’s National Communications Authority said the cable disruptions occurred in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Portugal.
The cable faults off Ivory Coast come less than a month after three telecommunications cables were severed in the Red Sea, highlighting the vulnerability of critical communications infrastructure. The anchor of a cargo ship sunk by Houthi militants was probably responsible, according to assessments by the US and cable industry group the Internet Cable Protection Committee.
The Red Sea is a critical telecommunications route, connecting Europe to Africa and Asia via Egypt. The damaged cables carried about 25% of traffic in the region, according to estimates from Hong Kong-based internet provider HGC Global Communications, which uses the cables. It was re-routed via alternative cables, including via the west coast of Africa.
Together, the problems with cables on either side of the continent create a capacity crunch, with customers of those cables scrambling to find alternative routes.
Microsoft Corp. reported disruptions to its cloud services and Microsoft 365 applications across Africa.
“This has led to a significant degradation of data services across the country, with mobile-network operators working around the clock to restore full services,” the authority said.
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