On March 14, 2024, internet connectivity across several African countries faced significant disruptions, affecting millions of users and sparking concerns about the reliability of local internet infrastructure. The disruptions, which primarily impacted west and central African countries along with South Africa, were attributed to multiple undersea cable failures in the region, according to reports from impacted network providers and observations by tech companies like Cloudflare. The African authorities are investigating the rupture of said cables.
One of the most affected countries was Ivory Coast (where connectivity dropped to only 4%), followed by Benin (operating at only 14% of normal capacity), Liberia (17%), and Ghana (25%). According to Netblocks, an NGO specializing in international cybersecurity, the disruptions also impacted, to a lesser extent, Burkina Faso, Togo, Cameroon, Gabon, Namibia, and Niger, as well as Nigeria and South Africa. They reported that data transmission and measurement showed a significant disruption in international transit, “likely at or near the landing points of submarine network cables.”
The situation was further exacerbated by ongoing issues with the submarine cable operator Seacom, which faced service-impacting outages in the Red Sea. The company’s efforts to repair the broken cable were delayed due to permit issues, adding to the challenges faced by internet service providers and businesses relying on stable connectivity.
Mainone, owner of the ruptured cable, had their website offline for several hours due to issues with their self hosted DNS name servers. Once back online, they spoke on the issue:
“Our preliminary analysis would suggest some form of seismic activity on the seabed resulted in a break to the cable”,
– Mainone, adding afterwards that it would obtain more data when the cables get retrieved for repair.
According to reports from African media, the internet has now returned to normal, but this incident showed the critical importance of these cables. The impact was felt across various sectors, including major network providers such as Vodacom in South Africa, MTN in Nigeria, and Celtiis in Bénin and even cloud providers like Microsoft’s Azure which also experienced disruptions along the West Coast of Africa.
Cloudflare’s Radar data detailed the entire incident, which underscores how the entire continent depends on a few providers for global internet access.
More about Submarine cables:
- Most internet data traffic is carried via submarine fiber optic cables.
- One such cable, spanning 15,000 kilometers, runs from Portugal to Cape Town, South Africa.
- These structures enable connectivity between people from virtually anywhere on the planet.
- Crossing continental distances, they handle about 99% of global data traffic.
- The data traffic speed through these cables is extremely high, in the terabits per second.
- Nowadays, these cables connect all continents except Antarctica.
- The cables are extremely thick and reinforced to ensure longevity, sometimes including even Kevlar.
If you wish to read more about how the internet infrastructure looks like nowadays, take a look at my recently updated post “How does the internet look like in 2023”.
There’s a problem with your site in Internet Explorer, but aside from that, it’s fantastic. I’ll be sure to check back for updates.
well I mean, install firefox or something newer. Internet Explorer died years ago