In a significant development impacting Internet connectivity across East Africa, two submarine Internet cables linking South Africa and Kenya, owned by Eassy and Seacom, have ceased operations since Sunday, May 12, 2024. The disruption has led to widespread Internet service outages in several East African nations, including Kenya and Tanzania.
The immediate cause of the outage remains undetermined, although Wiocc, an investor in the Eassy cable, revealed that a cut occurred between South Africa and Mozambique along the cable’s route on the continent’s eastern coast. Similarly, reports indicate a similar incident with the Seacom cable around the same timeframe, resulting in a complete loss of subsea capacity between South Africa and East Africa.
On the day of the outage, Tanzania’s Minister of Information, Communication, and Information Technology, Nape Nnauye, acknowledged in a statement that both Eassy and Seacom had notified the government about the Internet disruption. He emphasized ongoing efforts to resolve the issue but warned of potential low access to Internet and international voice calls during the resolution process. Locals in affected areas, particularly in Kenya and Tanzania, reported significant disruptions, with social media flooded with accounts of Internet blackouts.
A cybersecurity and Internet governance watchdog organization highlighted the severity of the situation, noting widespread Internet connectivity failures in Tanzania and the French Island of Mayotte. However, the impact on other regions like Malawi and Mozambique appeared to be minimal. Frustrated subscribers of major networks and Internet service providers in Kenya, such as Safaricom and Telkom, vented their grievances on social media platforms, underscoring the challenges posed by the recurrent disruptions.
Safaricom, in response to the crisis, assured its customers of continuous monitoring of network and service delivery despite the multiple undersea cable cuts. The company also mentioned having redundancy plans in place to mitigate the impact of such incidents. Notably, South African Internet users were relatively unaffected due to the predominant reliance on alternative cable systems, such as Equiano and Wacs, along the continent’s west coast. Traffic from the affected east coast routes was redirected to these alternative paths following the incident.
The timing of the East Africa cable outage is particularly unfortunate, occurring in the wake of similar disruptions in the Red Sea region three months earlier. In that incident, three subsea cables connecting Africa and Southeast Asia to Europe were damaged during an attack by Yemeni Houthi rebels. Additionally, on March 14, 2024, four undersea telecom cables near the Ivory Coast went offline, further exacerbating the challenges faced by the region in maintaining reliable Internet connectivity.