Internet outage hits several African countries as undersea cables fail

A dozen countries across Africa have suffered a major internet outage as multiple undersea telecommunication cables reported failures. Network disruptions caused by cable damage have occurred in Africa in recent years, but “today’s disruption points to something larger (and) this is amongst the most severe,” said Isik Mater, director of research at NetBlocks, a group that documents internet disruptions around the world. Internet firm Cloudflare reported a pattern in the timing of the disruptions that heavily impacted at least 10 countries in West Africa, including Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. The cause of the failure was not immediately clear.