The East African region has been affected because some of its large content providers are served by data centres in South Africa, the closest node to Kenya. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg) 
“The information we do have has confirmed that one of the sub sea cables seems cut 45km north of Durban,” Ben Roberts, group chief technology and and innovation officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies said. “This is causing the internet to be sluggish.”
The East African region has been affected because some of its large content providers are served by data centres in South Africa, the closest node to Kenya, Roberts said. Internet traffic has been rerouted while engineers resolve the issue, he said.
“Network data show a disruption to internet connectivity in and around multiple East Africa countries,” internet-analysis firm NetBlocks said in a post on X.
⚠ Confirmed: Network data show a disruption to internet connectivity in and around multiple East #Africa countries; the incident is attributed to failures affecting the SEACOM and EASSY subsea cable systems 📉 pic.twitter.com/8TsAvKrOe6
— NetBlocks (@netblocks) May 12, 2024
Damage to four sub-sea cables off the west coast of Africa disrupted internet services across the continent in March. The West Africa Cable System, MainOne, South Atlantic 3 and ACE sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected at the time, triggering outages and connectivity issues for mobile operators and internet service providers, according to data from firms including NetBlocks, Kentik and Cloudflare.