Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso were heavily affected, according to data from Netblocks, which monitors cybersecurity and the governance of the internet.
The internet infrastructure company Cloudflare said in a post on X that major internet disruption was continuing in the Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin and Niger.
Namibia and Lesotho were also affected.
“There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa,” Cloudflare Radar said.
I think what’s happening is that there isn’t much subsea cable service to this part of Africa. It looks like it’s really only ACE, one of the cut cables, that lands in every (non-landlocked) country in western Africa. This would mean that countries that are cut off without another cable landing would have to use some overland routes if they’re available, potentially causing degraded service if they become over capacity (which I assume they would since they’re probably not meant to be carrying traffic normally going to a subsea cable).
The “at or near a network cable landing” point is interesting, I assume the cables would be closer together there so you would be more likely to hit more than one with an anchor or due to construction or something of that nature.