Africa Subsea Cable Faults

Beginning March 14, 2024, a series of faults on subsea cables serving Africa caused widespread Internet disruptions across multiple countries. The cables affected included WACS (West Africa Cable System), ACE (Africa Coast to Europe), MainOne, and SAT-3/SAFE, all of which carry the majority of international Internet capacity for West and Southern Africa.

The faults were geographically concentrated near the coasts of Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, though the precise causes, believed to include anchor dragging and potential seismic activity, were not fully confirmed at the time. Countries including Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, and parts of Southern Africa via the connecting routes experienced degraded connectivity.

Repair ships were deployed, but subsea cable repairs in those waters typically take weeks. During the outage period, ISPs rerouted traffic to alternative cables and satellite capacity where available, but the total bandwidth reduction was severe enough to cause noticeable degradation across the region. Cloudflare, Thousand Eyes, and IODA documented the incident extensively.