East Africa outages stir fears over Africa’s internet vulnerabilities

The outage mirrors similar events in March, when cuts to four cables disrupted internet access in Nigeria, Ghana and other West African countries. For days, service providers only offered intermittent connection to users, stifling online banking activities, Ghana’s stock exchange, and other internet-based services.

Connectivity in East Africa was also limited in February when three submarine cables that run through the Red Sea were damaged. The International Cable Protection Committee, a group representing 98% of subsea cable operators, said the breaks were likely caused by the anchor of a cargo ship that was shot at by the Yemen-based Houthi rebel group. Those cables have not been repaired due to tensions over right of access to those waters.

Fixing the breaks on EASSy and Seacom may take several days to weeks, and may be “dependent on weather, sea conditions and the extent of the damage,” said Chris Wood, chief executive of the West Indian Ocean Cable Company, which helped Google to land a subsea cable in Africa. MainOne, an internet provider in West Africa, announced last week that its cables that were cut in March have now been repaired.

Anxieties that have accompanied the three episodes of cable cuts in three months underscore Africa’s increased dependence on the internet for commerce and daily life.

Africa’s internet economy could reach $180 billion by 2025, according to estimates by Google and the World Bank’s private investment arm, the International Financial Corporation. That prospect should increase the sense of urgency among policymakers and service providers to build more resilience into the continent’s internet architecture.

Internet disruption in Africa tends to happen sub-regionally because cables run through multiple countries clustered together. “East Africa has one of the most advanced regional integration programs, perhaps only outdone by the Southern African Customs Union and the Francophone units,” said Bright Simons, research lead at IMANI Center for Policy and Education in Ghana.

“Yet, just like elsewhere, it has not been able to activate a regional framework for telecom emergencies like this, leaving operators to arrange ad hoc cross-border arrangements,” Simons said. Telecom regulatory authorities should work out “a contingency quasi-treaty” to coordinate faster responses during such emergencies, he said.

Africa has seen an increase in submarine cables over the past two decades, including Google’s 15,000-kilometer South Africa to Portugal Equiano cable, and the 45,000-kilometer 2Africa project owned by a consortium led by Meta. They have sometimes come under criticism for ulterior motives: Two Mozilla-affiliated researchers said the tech giants’ cable projects “are using colonialist tactics to exploit Africa on a massive scale,” despite claiming to bridge the digital gap. But more cables has meant more capacity for internet access on the continent.

Merely having new cables is not enough for expanding Africa’s access to the internet. Integrating them into other critical national infrastructure and ensuring interoperability within each region is the key to long-term resilience.