Undersea Cable Damage Causes Internet Disruption In Nigeria, Ghana, Others

Internet watchdog, NetBlocks has said internet connectivity outages in eight West African countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon Ivory Coast, Liberia, and the Benin Republic on Thursday was a result of undersea cable damage.

NetBlocks said this in a post on its X handle on Thursday.

NetBlocks, in the post, said, “Live network data show today’s telecoms disruption in #Africa has intensified; the incident has high impact to West Africa with significant reductions in connectivity evident across the continent; operators report multiple subsea cable failures.”

Earlier, before that, it posted, “Confirmed: Live network data show a major disruption to internet connectivity in and around West and Central #Africa; the incident affects networks supplying telecoms via subsea cables to multiple countries and operators.”

Also, one of the world’s leading financial news organisations, Bloomberg, the West Africa Cable System, MainOne, and ACE sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected on Thursday.

MTN Nigeria, in a post on its X handle confirmed the internet disruption. It explained that the network outage experienced by its subscribers was a “result of damage to international undersea cables across East & West Africa”.

“The repair process is ongoing to resolve the situation as soon as possible. Please look out for further updates.”