Africa’s internet has been slow due to cable damage and recent strong winds preventing the vessel leaving the Capetown  harbour for repairs.

The cable vessel, Leon Thevenin, is off the coast of South Africa approximately just under half the way up to Namibia, reports Ren Alerts.


“When the vessel has loaded and departed, the expected duration to location of the break is around six days. Fixing the break will take another week at least,” the group said in an update.

The 16,000-kilometer system runs from South Africa to the UK, connecting much of western and central Africa to Europe and each other. A second WACS break near the UK likely won’t be fixed until late January, TENET/NREN said, with complete system repairs expected in early February.

A second cable, the SAT3/WACS, also was damaged and unable to support rerouted traffic, with that break site believed to be near Libreville, the capital of Gabon.

This has left dozens of service providers scrambling to respond to complaints with thousands of Africans dealing with absent or slow service. Major outages were reported across all Southern Africa. The cable system feeds terminals on the west coast that connect to interior locations and their service providers.

We await further updates

 If you liked the article and want to read more tech news click here and if you want to see the services we offer, for home and businesses!

Share This