Summary: Following the internet outage on March 14 in Liberia, claims have surfaced on social media about the countries that were affected. Some Liberians made insinuations that Liberia was the only country affected. We have checked and found that several West African countries were also affected by Thursday’s internet disruption.
On early Thursday, March 14, there was a major internet disruption in Liberia. The situation, which lasted for over 14 hours, crippled online transactions including mobile money transfers and banking services. Social media could not be accessed as well.
Liberia’s two telecommunications companies – Lone Star Cell/ MTN and Orange Liberia informed their consumers that the outage was due to “an outage on the international Submarine cable that provides connectivity to Liberia”.
According to the BBC, the Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA) said it was caused by an incident involving the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine communications cable in Ivory Coast
There have been concerns about whether Liberia is the only country that was affected by the internet disruption.
Rating Justification
To fact-check this, we reviewed several news articles published by credible international news outlets including the BBC and Reuters about the outage.
First, we found a March 14 news article by Reuters that mentioned countries in West and Central Africa affected by the internet outage due to the undersea cables being down. Reuters, citing Internet firm Cloudflare named Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, and Niger as countries affected.
Second, we reviewed an article by CRISIS24 – a firm widely regarded as a leader in integrated risk management, crisis response, consulting, and global protective solutions.
The report listed over fifteen countries including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Gambia, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Togo affected by the internet outage after it was “earlier reported that Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, and Niger were all blackouts.
The BBC also published an article on its website about the internet situation on the African continent. South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, and Ivory Coast were listed as countries “hit by major internet outages.”
Conclusion
Based on credible news reports, we conclude that the internet outage did not affect Liberia alone. Over 15 other countries across Africa including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Gambia, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Togo were all affected by the internet disruptions on Thursday, March 14.
