EU-Egypt Enthusiasm | Time running out for TikTok? | Severed Connections

Severed connections

West Africa has been grappling with large-scale internet outages since last week, following damage to undersea fibreoptic cables. C?te d’Ivoire, Senegal, Nigeria and Ghana are among the worst-affected. The economic impact is likely to be considerable. Estimates suggest that fully repairing the damage will take around five weeks.?

Undersea cables play a critical role in the global economy. Improvements in connections across Africa over the last decade have helped internet-based businesses flourish, but these connections are extremely fragile. Cables can be severed by sabotage, undersea geological activity, ships dragging their anchors, or even curious sharks. African countries are vulnerable due to the relatively low density of cable connections to many countries.?

Several major cable systems extend around large sections of the African continent – Google’s Equiano cable, which runs from Portugal to South Africa, was completed in 2022 – but most of these systems have spurs that create ‘landing points’ with only a handful of countries. Sierra Leone, Liberia and Mauritania, for example, are each connected by a single cable, meaning that any damage can cause a total internet blackout.?

South Africa, on the other hand, has multiple connections, so that telecom operators can reroute traffic in the event of an outage. Better cable resilience, backup cables and more data centres in Africa would all help in the event of future disruption. >> Read more

-?Ben Payton, Infrastructure Reporter, African Business

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