A serious internet outage has struck East Africa following faults in two submarine cables connecting South Africa and Kenya.
The Eassy and Seacom cable systems, which run along the east coast of Africa, experienced disruptions, resulting in nearly complete internet blackouts in some areas of Kenya and Tanzania, with impacts also felt in Rwanda, Uganda, and Madagascar.
Reports on social media indicate that users on major networks and internet service providers, such as Safaricom and Telkom Kenya, have been affected by the outage.
The exact cause of the faults is yet to be determined, but the simultaneous occurrence of disruptions in both cable systems suggests a potential undersea event, akin to the incident that severed four cables off the coast of Ivory Coast in West Africa in mid-March.
The outage underscores the vulnerability of internet connectivity in the region and highlights the importance of robust infrastructure and contingency measures to mitigate such disruptions in the future.