MainOne, an Equinix Company, has successfully completed the repair of its submarine cable system, reaffirming its dedication to bolstering digital infrastructure in West Africa. The repairs were necessitated by an outage that occurred on Thursday, March 14, 2024, due to a suspected underwater rock slide off the coast of Cote d’Ivoire.
“We are pleased to announce the completion of repairs to our submarine cable system,” said Funke Opeke, Managing Director of MainOne. “We are grateful for the support and collaboration of our partners, the patience of our valued customers, and the unwavering commitment of our team during this unplanned outage.”
MainOne acknowledges the disruption caused by the incident and took steps to minimize the impact on its customers in West Africa. This included rerouting traffic and providing restoration capacity within its network.
The outage, believed to be caused by an underwater rock slide off the coast of Cote d’Ivoire, affected multiple submarine cable systems in the region:
- Africa Coast to Europe (ACE)
- Submarine Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT-3)
- West Africa Cable System (WACS)
- MainOne
While Seacom, whose network spans the East African and South African coastlines, remained unaffected directly, it had to reroute traffic due to disruptions in its partner networks on the West Coast.
The impact of the March outage was significant, affecting thirteen African countries along the West African seaboard, leading to either degraded services or near-total Internet outages.
| Country | Connected to a Submarine Cable | Submarine and Terrestrial Cables | Number of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) | Internet Resilience Index (IRI) Score |
| Benin | Yes | ACE, MTWA/MoovAfrica, SAT-3 | 1 | 42% |
| Burkina Faso | No | Terrestrial to Benin, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Mali, Ghana | 2 | 39% |
| Cameroon | Yes | WACS, SAT-3, SAIL, NCSCS | 2 | 32% |
| Cote d’Ivoire | Yes | ACE, MainOne, MTWA/MoovAfrica, SAT-3, WACS | 1 | 37% |
| Gambia | Yes | ACE | 1 | 35% |
| Ghana | Yes | MainOne, ACE, Glo-1, SAT-3, WACS | 2 | 34% |
| Guinea | Yes | ACE | 1 | 30% |
| Liberia | Yes | ACE | 1 | 32% |
| Namibia | Yes | Equiano, WACS | 1 | 40% |
| Niger | No | Terrestrial to Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Benin | 1 | 26% |
| Nigeria | Yes | MainOne, SAT-3, ACE, Glo-1, WACS, Equiano, NCSCS | 7 | 30% |
| South Africa | Yes | ACE, Equiano, SEACOM, WACS, SAT-3, SAFE, EASSy, METISS, T3 | 4 | 53% |
| Togo | Yes | WACS, Equiano, MTWA/MoovAfrica | 1 | 36% |