Technology

Safaricom takes action after internet outage hits East Africa

Safaricom's headquarters in Westlands, Nairobi. (Photo: Courtesy)

By Lucy Mumbi | Sunday, May 12, 2024

Safaricom has activated redundancy measures to mitigate service interruptions and ensure continuous connectivity for its customers.

Communication service provider Safaricom has reported an outage on one of the undersea cables responsible for delivering internet traffic into and out of the country.

This comes after Kenyans raised complaints of slow internet speeds at around 11 am on Sunday.

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In response to the disruption, Safaricom said it had activated redundancy measures to mitigate service interruptions and ensure continuous connectivity for its customers while awaiting the full restoration of the affected cable.

"You may, however, experience reduced internet speeds," the company said in a notice on X on Sunday.

Ben Roberts, the group chief technology and innovation officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies, said internet services across East Africa were severely impacted due to confirmed faults in submarine cables connecting the region to South Africa.

According to Roberts, three crucial submarine cables in the Red Sea—Seacom, EIG and AAE1—suffered a cut, resulting in the internet outage.

This, he said, was confirmed by the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) and Seacom, but cables were yet to be repaired.

Nape Nnauye, the Tanzania minister of information, communication and information technology, also confirmed the outage, saying they had received preliminary reports from submarine cable providers Seacom and EASSy.

"At around 5 in the morning, we witnessed the absence of internet services along with international voice services. Seacom and EASSy have reported a problem with the cables between Mozambique and South Africa, causing the interruption of services in Tanzania."

Nnauye noted that efforts to resolve the issue were ongoing but that access to the internet and international phone services in Tanzania would be limited.

He said they would use alternative methods until the issue was resolved.