On 12 May, several nations in East Africa experienced significant internet outages
According to Netblocks, an internet observatory, these disruptions were due to malfunctions in the SEACOM and EASSy underwater cable systems.
The island of Mayotte, a French territory, and Tanzania were particularly affected, with substantial disruptions in internet services. Mozambique and Malawi also faced moderate levels of disruption, as reported by Netblocks.
Cloudflare, an internet service company, noted on one of its monitoring accounts that the faults in the EASSy and SEACOM cables were causing ongoing internet interruptions in countries including Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, and Madagascar.
Tanzania’s minister of information, communication, and information technology, Nape Nnauye, acknowledged, “The government had been informed by EASSy and SEACOM of disruption to the internet caused by a fault on the cables between Mozambique and South Africa.”
“There are ongoing efforts to solve the problem,” Nnauye stated. “As they continue to solve the problem, we will have very low access to internet and international voice calls,” concluded Nnauye.
Cable faults disrupt East Africa's internet
East African internet outage due to SEACOM and EASSy cable faults, affecting Mayotte and Tanzania. (Image source: Adobe Stock)
