Africa West Africa Braces for Internet Disruptions as MainOne Forecasts Weeks for Cable Repairs

MainOne, a West African digital infrastructure service provider, anticipates that repairing its undersea submarine cables may take one to two weeks following major cuts to undersea cables on Thursday, causing internet disruptions across the continent.

The cable cuts affected the operations of banks and telecommunication companies in Nigeria. MainOne attributed the network outage to an external incident resulting in a cut on its submarine cable system offshore Cote D’Ivoire, along the West African coast.

The company explained that the repair process involves identifying and assigning a vessel to retrieve necessary spares for repair, splicing the affected section of the cable by skilled technicians, inspecting and testing joints for defects, and subsequently lowering the cable back to the seabed.

Additionally, MainOne is collaborating with cable systems unaffected by the incident to secure restoration capacity.

Meanwhile, MTN Group stated that Bayobab, a digital connectivity solutions company, is coordinating repair efforts for damaged underwater communication cables along West Africa.

The company is also collaborating with partners to mitigate the impact of the damage by rerouting traffic and enabling more circuits, assuring full recovery as swiftly as possible.