African banks, telecoms hit with internet failure as undersea cables damaged

Banks and telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria and some African countries have been down with internet outages due to damage to international undersea cables supplying them with connectivity.

It was learnt that damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and is causing downtime across West and South African countries.

The West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3 cables are affected.

Consequently, some bank networks in Nigeria have been down and unable to process transactions as a result of the cyberspace interruption.

This has subjected MTN subscribers and other telecom users to start complaining of poor data experience since Thursday morning.

MTN has issued a statement to respond to its subscribers’ complaints about poor internet connectivity disclosing the cause.

“We apologize for the challenges you may be experiencing with internet speed and accessing data services at the moment,” MTN said.

“This is 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.”

Reports from local media said that the cable damage has also caused a massive internet problem in South Africa.

South African publication, My Broadband reported that WIOCC group business development head Darren Bedford confirmed that multiple undersea cables operating along Africa’s West coast are experiencing outages.

Bedford said their capacity on the Equiano cable had not been impacted. WIOCC also has capacity on the East cost EASSy cable. Due to this redundant capacity, Bedford said the outage will not impact their customers.

Vodacom, one of South Africa’s telecom operators, has also confirmed the undersea cable outages.

It said, “Multiple undersea cable failures between South Africa and Europe are currently impacting South Africa’s network providers, including Vodacom.”

“This means that certain customers are currently experiencing intermittent connectivity issues. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience while the issue is being attended to.”