Internet Outage Across East Africa is a Reminder that Africa Needs More Cable Infrastructure

The U.S. embassy in Tanzania has partially closed down for two days, citing the “degraded network service nationwide.” Since Sunday, the East African country has been dealing with disrupted internet connectivity due to deep sea cable cuts, and the embassy has postponed consular appointments.

Kenya and Uganda have also been impacted by the cable cuts, which has slowed down internet services across these countries. According to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK), the deep sea fiber cut occurred at a teleport station in Mtunzini, a small coastal town along KwaZulu-Natal’s coastline in South Africa. The cuts impacted East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) and SEACOM.

The global connectivity afforded by the internet is due to slender cables that carry data across various points. These slender cables are constantly under threat of breakage and they happen frequently, but the effect of breakage events vary according to magnitude and dependency. In its statement, the CAK added that local internet connectivity is being carried by The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS) cable.

Unlike Kenya, where the impact of the cable cuts have been moderate due to the availability of an alternative cable system, Tanzania has been severely affected because of its reliance on the affected cable systems. According to reports, internet connectivity in Tanzania is currently down to about 30 percent of its expected strength. This means everything from banking to calls over the internet has been slowed to crawl.

This is the third major cable cut event in Africa over the past four months. In February, an anchor drag from a wrecked ship seemingly hit by Houthi rebels cut cables in the Red Sea and reduced traffic between Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East by 25 percent, an. In March, undersea cable cuts greatly affected internet connectivity across several West African countries.

The West African event affected four cable lines, including MainOne, a major upstream provider in Nigeria, which services big businesses like banks and even local internet service providers. According to IT infrastructure consultant Somto Ezekwesili, MainOne tried to temporarily attempt connectivity from other upstream providers, which immediately led to a congestion.

“The root cause analysis MainOne sent to its clients stated that there was a seismic marine incident, and it affected Nigeria, Ghana and Cote D’ivoire,” Ezekwesili tells OkayAfrica. Using that major West African cable cut event, he explains that the unpredictability of these cuts means companies and institutions like banks, whose services are deeply tied to the internet, need to invest in alternatives.

“Most banks have this already but the congestion in the active upstream provider networks was what made the speed from alternative providers slow,” he adds.

In Tanzania, the closure of the U.S. Embassy is emblematic of the disruption that’s ongoing due to the relied upstream providers now dealing with cable cuts. Banking services will be greatly affected, and even things that are as data-light as WhatsApp calls will be impacted. While EASSy and SEACOM will no doubt reduce redundancies to optimize the part of their infrastructure that’s functioning, it will take weeks for repairs to enhance internet connectivity.

Cable cut repairs are a very delicate, time-consuming operation. MainOne announced earlier today that the damaged subsea cables have now been fully repaired, eight weeks later. Currently, the whole of Africa has just one vessel dedicated to fixing cable cuts—the Léon Thévenin. While telecom service providers have improved the quality of internet connectivity across Africa over the last two decades, there’s still a wide gap with regards to infrastructure for cable management.

“What we should be asking for is more investments in subsea cable infrastructure,” Ezekwesili says, adding that there could always be more service providers across Africa to cushion the effects of massive cable cut events.