AI & African Enterprises: March 2024 Newsletter
Newsletter originally published March 25, 2024
🌊 Africa's DeepSea Woes
The big AI headline in Africa this month had nothing to do with data privacy regulations, partnership or product announcements, or even AI start-up fundraising. The big news was all about the substantial damage to infrastructure underpinning connectivity in Africa.
Subsea cables that connect South Africa to Europe experienced damage along the coasts of Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal on March 14, leading to widespread connectivity issues, affecting voice and data services, across at least 13 African countries. Microsoft reported disruption to Azure cloud services in South Africa. Liberia experienced the worst impact of affected countries, where voice and data outages lasted about 12 hours. Service disruptions compounded connectivity issues in East Africa due to severing of subsea cables in the Red Sea in February. In October 2023, South Africa experienced service disruptions due to a fault in subsea cables in the East Atlantic.
Announcements from subsea landing service provider, MainOne, and Ghana's National Communication Authority suggest the breakage will take anywhere from 3-5 weeks to resolve. In the interim, service was restored by re-routing connectivity through Google's Equiano cable, which was unaffected by the incident. Preliminary investigations by MainOne suggest the fault was a result of a break in subsea cables due to seismic activity. Telcos including Orange, Angola Cables, MTN, and Vodcam released statements about efforts to manage connectivity in response to the event.
Takeaway: As digital services and connectivity attract broader use, securing and protecting subsea infrastructure is becoming critical to Africa's growth plans.
—Team ajala