By Adedapo Adesanya
Internet connectivity is significantly disrupted across several East African nations following faults in the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) and SEACOM cables, according to reports by Internet monitoring groups, NetBlocks and Cloudflare, first discovered late on Sunday.
Internet connection monitoring platform, NetBlocks, in a post on X, detailed the impact, indicating that Tanzania and the French Island of Mayotte were experiencing severe disruptions.
“Network data show a disruption to Internet connectivity in and around multiple East African countries,” NetBlocks wrote.
It was reported that Mozambique and Malawi were also affected but to a medium extent.
Cloudflare corroborated these findings, noting ongoing connectivity issues in Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, and Madagascar.
Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecom operator, responded to the disruptions by activating redundancy measures to ensure continued service, albeit with expected reductions in internet speeds.
The company, renowned for its robust customer base, is working diligently towards a full restoration of the cables.
This incident follows a series of outages in March that affected Nigeria and other West African countries as well as Southern Africa, disrupting digital communication and business operations.
Those outages were traced back to damages on four sub-sea cables located off the west coast of Africa, namely the West Africa Cable System, MainOne, South Atlantic 3, and ACE sea cables, which are pivotal in facilitating telecommunications data across the continent.
Speaking then, Mr Chris Wood, CEO of the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC), highlighted the high costs associated with repairing such critical infrastructure.
In March, he estimated the collective repair costs for the four affected cables could reach about $8 million.
Mr Wood explained that depending on the extent of damage, restoring a single subsea cable could require between $1 million and $2 million.