Damage to at least three subsea cables off the West Coast of Africa on Thursday disrupted internet services in Nigeria, Ghana and other countries across the continent.
Telecommunications subscribers and bank users were stranded for hours as the disruption paralysed digital transactions and internet communications.
According to 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.
According to data from internet analysis firms including NetBlocks, Kentik and Cloudflare, the cut triggered outages and connectivity issues for mobile operators and internet service providers across the West African sub-region.
The cause of the cable faults has not yet been determined as of press time but in a statement, telecommunications company, MTN Nigeria, explained that the network outage experienced by its subscribers was as 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,” the company said.
The company had also linked network outage experienced by its subscribers for the major part of February 28, 2024 on “multiple fibre cuts”.