Parts of Africa continues to suffer frequent internet outages for different reasons. Firstly, there are political compulsions – which are designed by the political elute especially during elections. Prime examples of this are Congo, Uganda, Chad and The Gambia which went suffered internet blackouts in 2016 die to political instability in these countries.
When Cameroonians in the anglophone region were taken offline by the government for over 90-days, it was also for political considerations as was the case when Ethiopia moved to quell anti-government protests in Amhara.
Protecting the integrity of exams has also come up strongly in parts of Africa as enough basis to keep everyone else – except a select few, offline. Egypt, Algeria, and Ethiopia have all gone down that path.
The most recent cause of blackout occurred due to undersea fibre optic cable cut. The affected countries being the Republic of Congo and Somalia. In both cases, a ship cut internet cables and left millions of people offline.
Both countries have had the connection restored thankfully and people can enjoy the benefits of global net interconnectivity. Congo did not quantify the losses – at least not publicly, but Somali said the country lost $1m per day due to the outage.
