MILLIONS of internet users groan as disruption continues in various countries across Africa.
Outages have been reported in countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Ghana and Burkina Faso.
In Nigeria, telecommunications subscribers and bank users were stranded for hours as the disruption paralysed digital transations and internet communications.
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.
“There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa,” said Cloudflare Radar, which provides information on internet connections.
Internet connectivity in the Ivory Coast was down to around just 4% on Thursday morning, according to Netblocks, which tracks cybersecurity and internet connectivity.
Liberia at one point dropped to 17% while Benin was at 14% and Ghana 25%, Netblocks said.
In South Africa, Vodacom said that “customers are currently experiencing intermittent connectivity issues due to multiple undersea cable failures”.
A fault has also been reported on the MainOne cable system which serves Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos.
The Liberian government said internet disruption had been reported from Thursday morning.
Citizens are unable to access the basic internet as well as social media across the vast majority of the country. International bank transfers are also reported to be affected while there are limited international voice calls.
“It seems like 50% of my life is gone today,” Benjamin Garkpah told the BBC from the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
Fatumata Barry said her business had stalled because she can’t receive payments through mobile money.
The Liberia Telecommunications Authority said it was caused by an incident involving the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine communications cable in Ivory Coast.
In Ghana, the National Communications Authority (NCA) reported that multiple undersea cable disruptions were responsible for the outage.