Several Countries Suffer Internet Outages After Subsea Cable Cut in East Africa

Multiple East African countries face internet disruptions after a subsea cable cut near Durban, affecting connectivity significantly.By Paul Lipscombe, Data Center Dynamics
May 13, 2024

Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda have all been impacted

Several countries in East Africa have suffered a drop in Internet services after it emerged that at least one subsea cable in the region has been cut.

It's led to Internet outages across Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda.

“Network data show a disruption to Internet connectivity in and around multiple East Africa countries; the incident is attributed to failures affecting the SEACOM and EASSY subsea cable systems,” said global web monitor NetBlocks on X, yesterday.

Some telcos have acknowledged the issue, including Kenya's Safaricom, which said it was “experiencing a challenge.”

“The information we do have has confirmed that one of the subsea cables seems cut 45 kilometers north of Durban [South Africa],” added Ben Roberts, group chief technology and innovation officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies said. “This is causing the Internet to be sluggish.”

According to Cloudflare Radar, which monitors Internet connectivity, Tanzania is one the worst-affected countries with traffic falling to 30 percent of expected levels.

Cloudflare Radar also reports that Malawi, Mozambique, and Madagascar have been affected.

It comes just weeks after the western coast of Africa suffered from outages after multiple cables were damaged.

The SAT-3/West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and South Atlantic 3 were all impacted in March.

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