Africa hit by another subsea cable cut

Damage to an undersea cable off the African coast is exacerbating disruptions of internet services to the continent, impacting customers on the islands of Mauritius and Reunion.

Efforts to repair the South Africa-Far East (Safe) cable, which links Mauritius and Reunion to South Africa, India and Malaysia, have been put in motion, Port Louis-based Mauritius Telecom said in a statement last Friday.

The damage halted operations at SBM Bank (Mauritius), on what should have been a busy last Friday of the month. “Due to a technical problem with the internet gateway on the Safe submarine cable, some of our services - including our ATMs, point-of-sale terminal and cards - are currently experiencing a temporary unavailability,” the lender said.

Four cables were damaged near Ivory Coast last month after seismic activity in the region, with repairs ongoing. Three additional cables off the coast of Yemen have been offline since late February after they were severed by a cargo ship sunk by Houthi militants. The company responsible for the repair of those cables is still waiting for a permit to work in Yemeni waters, one of the cable operators, Seacom, said.

The damaged 13 500-kilometre Safe fibre cable is one of three connecting Mauritius, an island nation with close to 1.3 million people and an economy mostly dependent on financial services and tourism. The cable belongs to a consortium of companies that includes Mauritius Telecom, Vodafone Group and Orange, among others. The cause of the damage has yet to be determined.