Thirteen countries across Africa experienced Internet outages on Thursday due to damage to submarine fiber optic cables. Some countries, including Ghana and Nigeria, are still suffering from nationwide outages.
Multiple network providers reported Internet outages yesterday, and Cloudflare’s Radar tool, which monitors Internet usage patterns, detailed how the outage seemingly moved from the northern part of West Africa to South Africa. All 13 countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa, The Gambia, and Togo) reportedly suffered nationwide outages, with most seeing multiple networks hit.
I wonder what happened. Well, I mean, these undersea cable breaks are nearly always caused by a ship’s captain with innovative ideas about anchor usage, but there’s a tiny chance it could be something nefarious too – although with no apparent motive, I’d assume it’s just run of the mill incompetence like usual
Didn’t the Houthis recently sabotage some of the Red Sea cables? I imagine it’s related to that attack.
Yeah, IDK if it’s incompetence or sabotage, but Russia has been threatening to do it for awhile. They threaten a lot too, so who knows. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-medvedev-says-moscow-now-has-free-hand-destroy-enemies-undersea-2023-06-14/
Yeah, they were the initial main suspects in the undersea cable & LNG pipeline fuckery that happened in the Baltic late last year, but it turned out a Chinese ship is somehow tied to it which made the whole thing way more interesting since it seems the damage was deliberate (or the ship’s captain and crew were so fantastically incompetent they didn’t notice they were dragging anchor for over 100km, which doesn’t seem likely although not impossible either).
Personally I don’t think it’s likely that the Russians would have done this if it did turn out to be sabotage; they have a lot of allies of some degree or another in Africa and among those countries affected, so it doesn’t seem like they’d have a motive to do it – they would have screwed over friendly nations for absolutely no gain, and while they do shoot themselves in the foot all the time, cutting those cables seems like it would be an incredibly stupid footgun even for them. Although I’m reasonably clued in on this stuff I’m absolutely not some sort of geopolitics expert though, so just because I can’t see a motive or gain doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be any, but it does seem unlikely they’d be the culprit. If I had to bet on someone, it’d be a regional actor, but in classic European whitey fashion I’m shamefully underinformed on the goings-on in Africa so I don’t even know who to bet on.
But yeah, as I said, it’s probably just dumbfuckery as it is in 99.9% of the cases when cables break. It’s just fun to speculate.
A lot of those countries have had tension with their neighbors because they’ve been taken over by a series of military coups which are aligned with each other and gradually spreading. I’m sure other stuff is also going on (I’m also shamefully uninformed), but that jumps out as a possibility. Cutting communications is useful for a coup and preventing one, depending on timing, but you’re right that a mistake is more likely
It’s hard to tell with Russia and I’m no expert either, but Africa may have been stirring that they’ll support Ukraine or something. You’re right though, it’s only speculation.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Thirteen countries across Africa experienced Internet outages on Thursday due to damage to submarine fiber optic cables.
All 13 countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa, The Gambia, and Togo) reportedly suffered nationwide outages, with most seeing multiple networks hit.
As of this writing, Cloudflare reports that six countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Côte d’Ivoire, are still suffering outages.
The outages started at around 05:00 UTC on Thursday in Guinea, Liberia, and The Gambia, Cloudflare said in a blog post that also shares charts of the affected countries’ Internet usage.
Numerous sources, including local network providers, like Vodacom, MTN, and the Nigerian Communications Commission, reported that damage to multiple undersea cables is to blame.
A Thursday press release from Reuben Muoka, director of public affairs at NCC, said: “The cuts occurred somewhere in Cote de’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal.”
The original article contains 463 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
