West Africa Internet Outage Highlights Morocco’s Crucial Role in Regional Connectivity

Doha – On Thursday, a widespread internet outage affected several countries in West and Central Africa with the Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Benin being the hardest hit, causing significant disruptions to fixed and mobile internet services.

According to Bloomberg, the outage was caused by faults in the MainOne and ACE undersea fiber optic cables, as reported by internet analysis firms such as NetBlocks, Kentik, and Cloudflare. The cause of the damage is yet to be determined.

Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis firm Kentik, described the incident as “a devastating blow to internet connectivity along the west coast of Africa, which will be operating in a degraded state for weeks to come.” It impacted eight West African countries, with Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Benin being the hardest hit.

Despite the widespread disruption, some operators including Moov Africa, a subsidiary of the Maroc Telecom Group, managed to maintain their services without interruption.

Moov Africa Ivory Coast customers were able to continue accessing the internet thanks to the West Africa submarine cable owned by the Maroc Telecom Group, which connects West Africa to Europe via Morocco.

The 9,400 km cable, with a capacity ranging from 20 to 60 trillion bits per second (Tbps), runs along the West African coast from Gabon to Morocco, with an extension to Portugal and eight landing points across seven countries. This infrastructure played a crucial role in maintaining internet connectivity in the region during the crisis.

The Moov Africa team’s responsiveness was essential in managing the situation. By implementing new capacities on the West Africa submarine cable and at Maroc Telecom’s Internet Points of Presence (PoPs) in Morocco, these operators enabled several providers to keep their customers connected.

The outage significantly impacted the Ivory Coast, where operators Orange and MTN were affected, disrupting daily life, particularly in the economic and banking sectors. However, Moov operations continued to function normally, attracting many customers to its services. In Abidjan, unusual queues formed outside Moov agencies for the purchase and recharge of SIM cards.

To address the crisis, the Ivorian government set up a crisis unit and an interministerial committee to monitor the situation and ensure the prompt restoration of internet services throughout the country.

The incident follows another outage last month, where three telecommunications cables were severed in the Red Sea. The US and the Internet Cable Protection Committee concluded that the anchor of a cargo ship sunk by Houthi terrorists was the probable culprit.

Effects of outage on provider operations

Hong Kong-based service provider HGC Global Communication has estimated that 25% of the traffic in the area, redirected via several cables, including one to Africa’s west coast, was carried by the damaged cables.

Major African telecommunications groups MTN and Vodacom acknowledged that they were not exempt from the effects of the underwater cable line faults.

Vodacom stated that “multiple undersea cable failures between South Africa and Europe are currently impacting network providers,” while MTN revealed that its services in West Africa were affected. However, the group stated that it is doing everything possible to “reroute traffic through alternative network paths” and “engaging with our partners to speed up the repair process for the damaged cables.”

Microsoft Corp also reported disruptions to its cloud services and Microsoft 365 apps across Africa due to the incident.

The outage draws parallels to a similar issue that shook the continent the previous year when the West African Cable System and the South Atlantic 3 cable sustained damage at a distinct site near the mouth of the Congo River following an underwater landslide.

As the region grapples with the fallout from the latest outage, the importance of reliable and resilient internet infrastructure has never been more apparent. Morocco’s role in supporting its neighbors during this crisis underscores the need for increased cooperation and investment in the development of robust communication networks across the continent.