Major internet outage continues to impact South Africa and other parts of Africa

South Africa and several other African countries continue to struggle with internet connectivity after undersea cables were damaged. Picture: Pexels

South Africa and several other African countries continue to struggle with internet connectivity after undersea cables were damaged. Picture: Pexels

Published Mar 15, 2024

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South Africans are continuing to feel the impact of undersea cable failures, as more people experience internet issues.

Netblocks, an internet watchdog organisation, said on X that telecoms outages in parts of Africa are ongoing and that issues with connectivity will be experienced in different countries.

“Metrics show the West and Central #Africa telecoms outage is ongoing, with further declines in connectivity observed to multiple countries through the day; the incident is attributed to cable damage impacting the WACS, MainOne, SAT3 and ACE subsea fiber networks,” Netblocks said.

Data from Netblocks shows that African countries Ivory Coast, Liberia, Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mauritius and Togo were impacted the most.

Cameroon, Gabon, Namibia, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo experienced medium impact, while the impact in Nigeria was low.

According to Netblocks, the status of South Africa was restoring.

On Thursday evening, Vodacom said that after undersea cable failures between South Africa and Europe impacted them and other network providers, they had implemented an alternative solution to restore normal service to customers.

Microsoft Azure on Thursday also warned customers that were using their services in South Africa (North) and South Africa (West) that they may experience increased network latency or drops when accessing their resources.

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