U.S. Embassy shuts down as internet outage hits parts of Africa
The U.S. Embassy in Tanzania on Sunday announced a two day shutdown of activities and rescheduled consular appointments to a later date.
The embassy explained that the cancellation of activities which will be on Tuesday and Wednesday is due to an internet outage being experienced in the country as well as in Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda since Sunday.
It however later noted on Monday that the consular section would be open only for visa pick up and emergency cases involving American citizens.
Making the announcement in a post on its official X handle, the embassy wrote, “Due to degraded network service nationwide, the embassy will remain closed to the public. All consular appointments on May 14 & 15 will be cancelled and rescheduled to a later date. The consular section will be open as scheduled for visa pick up and for emergency American citizen cases.” (https://twitter.com/usembassytz/status/1789997408945910215?t=Z9H-acMUyiPFU7Y6xG4UgA&s=19)
Also, in an earlier post on Sunday, the embassy said, “Due to the current state of the internet in country, all consular appointments for tomorrow are cancelled. We will reschedule for a later date. The consular section will be open only for emergency services tomorrow.” (https://twitter.com/usembassytz/status/1789746833138368777?t=AxMp8SS0xcAKt9FMRDFvAg&s=19)
Speaking to the BBC, industry expert, Ben Roberts, blamed the outage on faults in the under-sea cables connecting the region to the rest of the world through South Africa.
According to metrics shared by internet monitoring group NetBlocks on Monday, Tanzania Tanzania is worst hit by the outage.
Telecom providers in these East African countries, also on Monday, reported that they were still experiencing slow internet connection.
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