On Thursday, internet outages swept across African nations, disrupting connectivity for mobile carriers and internet service providers. The outages were attributed to damages sustained by the MainOne and ACE sea cables, which are crucial conduits for telecommunications data. The severity of the disruptions varied across the affected countries.
The use of fiber optic cables has become widespread in Africa, despite significant regional discrepancies. This is largely due to substantial investments made by public and private organizations over the past decade. Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah, an associate professor at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, explained in an interview with The Conversation that even landlocked countries rely on these networks through agreements with countries that have landing stations.
Jahajeeah also noted that some regions are less affected by cable damage due to their geographic location. For instance, South Africa could reroute its internet traffic within a few hours of the breakages. However, several African countries, including Sierra Leone and Liberia, experience a complete halt in internet traffic when the cable breaks, as they only have one fiber optic cable entering the country.
According to Citinews Africa, the severity of the internet outage can be categorized into four levels: severe, high, medium, and low. The countries affected by the damaged cable fall under these categories. The list of these countries and the severity of their internet connectivity disruption includes Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Cameroon, Gabon, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Lesotho, and South Africa. The specific severity level for each of these countries is yet to be provided.
Play audio
No comments