Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Could you live without the Internet?
Speaker 3: I would say no, a very big, big, big norm.
Speaker 4: Well, when you don't have internet, you could actually fall
Speaker 4: into depression.
Speaker 1: We can survive without it. Back to life whenever did
Speaker 1: the same again, difficult.
Speaker 2: To imagine a life without it. And yet this year,
Speaker 2: several African countries have been affected by Internet outages, leaving
Speaker 2: people without access to the web, messaging services, or social
Speaker 2: media for hours and sometimes even days on end. The
Speaker 2: Internet has become such an important part of our life
Speaker 2: that these cuts not only affect the way we communicate,
Speaker 2: but also the economy of many of our countries. I'm
Speaker 2: Jennifer Zabasaja and this is the Next Africa Podcast, bringing
Speaker 2: you one story each week from the continent driving the
Speaker 2: future of global growth, but the context only Bloomberg can provide.
Speaker 2: This week on the podcast, Bloomberg reporters Rama and Nyang
Speaker 2: in Nairobi and Loney, Prinzlou and Johannesburg are joining me
Speaker 2: to discuss why Africa from west to east has been
Speaker 2: hit by these recurrent cuts. Later in the program, you'll
Speaker 2: hear from Loney about the solutions to improve internet access
Speaker 2: on the continent, but first let's head to Kenya and
Speaker 2: get a better understanding of the scale of the problem.
Speaker 2: So hi, Rama, thanks so much for joining us today
Speaker 2: and given the topic, I am glad you were able
Speaker 2: to connect. Has the connection been okay so far today?
Speaker 3: So far so good. We're back up and running.
Speaker 2: That's great. Let's cross our fingers. It sounds like things
Speaker 2: are better. Rama, you're in Nairob. We talk us through
Speaker 2: how these disruptions have affected your region.
Speaker 3: So essentially what happened, in very basic terms, is that
Speaker 3: the region as a whole, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, they're all
Speaker 3: affected by internet cuts in the middle of May. And
Speaker 3: essentially what had happened is that two of the cables
Speaker 3: that bring a big chunk of the data traffic along
Speaker 3: that region had been affected. There was a cable break
Speaker 3: right off a small coastal town called Tinzuni of kaZulu
Speaker 3: Natal and this one little cable break had ripple effects
Speaker 3: thousands and thousands of kilometers away. In some instances, the
Speaker 3: usmbssine Tanzania to actually stop operating for a couple of days.
Speaker 3: Here in Kenya, you could instantly realize, oh wait, hang
Speaker 3: on a minute, something is really not right here because
Speaker 3: your browsing speed just went all the way down. How
Speaker 3: you try to do your mobile banking services and you'd
Speaker 3: be like, hang on, why am I watching this in
Speaker 3: three sixty P or two forty P rather than the
Speaker 3: HD or the four K that I'm used to. But
Speaker 3: thankfully now a couple of weeks later, the cable break
Speaker 3: has been fixed.
Speaker 2: We have to put this into perspective too for people.
Speaker 2: You said, the cable break happened in Quasi lu Natal,
Speaker 2: which is here in South Africa where I am, and
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, had an effect all the way where
Speaker 2: you are. How significant was this damage? Have they figured
Speaker 2: out what exactly happened and why it happened.
Speaker 3: Not in much detail, not yet. Usually it's two causes
Speaker 3: that you tend to have when some of these cables
Speaker 3: eventually do break. I'm going to take you back a
Speaker 3: little bit towards around the middle of March. The cable
Speaker 3: breaks that we had on the western side of the continent,
Speaker 3: big chunk of that was essentially due to seytemic activity
Speaker 3: on the ocean floor. So you've got you know, the
Speaker 3: ocean floor goes around, rocks fall on these cables, break
Speaker 3: them off. Then you've got some people out to fix them.
Speaker 3: In other instances, it's usually you know active map, right,
Speaker 3: So troller comes in in a location where they're not
Speaker 3: supposed to be. Either they drop the anchor incorrectly or
Speaker 3: they essentially have these massive trolling nets to come in
Speaker 3: and they cause damage. If you look at the Red Sea,
Speaker 3: there's at least ten different cables that are running in there,
Speaker 3: and you've got a lot of maritime traffic moving up
Speaker 3: and now now combine that with what's happening with the
Speaker 3: who the's attacks on vessels in that area, and he
Speaker 3: just complicates a mass even further. So usually it's one
Speaker 3: of those two things. A man acts of God acts.
Speaker 2: Of God, which you know, when we're talking about solutions,
Speaker 2: is a bit hard to prevent the next time, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, what are some of the repairs that have
Speaker 2: gone into these undersea cables right now?
Speaker 3: So they sent out a vessel, one of these fairly
Speaker 3: specialized vessels up from the coast of South Africa. He's
Speaker 3: thankfully the voiding that instance was relatively short. So they
Speaker 3: go into that location figure out whether the break is
Speaker 3: depending on the equipment that they have, or rather the
Speaker 3: sort of damage that has been done than obviously they've
Speaker 3: got a lay new cable and then connect that into
Speaker 3: the original cable and repay it in the sections where
Speaker 3: the break had taken place. In some instances, part of
Speaker 3: the problem is that the number of vessels available to
Speaker 3: actually do this sort of work is pretty limited. There's
Speaker 3: a handful of them, most of them based in South Africa.
Speaker 3: So the journey to s you get from point A,
Speaker 3: you know, you get a vessel out of South Africa. Say,
Speaker 3: for example, it does move up to the eastern coastline
Speaker 3: around Mombasa, or it has to go all away west
Speaker 3: into around Abijean. That's a voyage that will take some time.
Speaker 3: Get there, do the survey, figure out where the cable
Speaker 3: break is, what sort of repairs and needed do we
Speaker 3: need extra cabling? So in some cases it can take
Speaker 3: weeks and millions of dollars just to fix a cable break.
Speaker 2: I wonder how you think this sort of speaks to
Speaker 2: the vulnerabilities of internet access across the continent, because we
Speaker 2: talk so much about how expanding internet access is important
Speaker 2: for development, but clearly there are some vulnerabilities that need
Speaker 2: to be addressed.
Speaker 3: Yeah they are, and you know, to put this into context,
Speaker 3: at least Kenya was somewhat fortunate in the sense that
Speaker 3: at least in this part of the world, we've got
Speaker 3: at least six different fib op to cables that are
Speaker 3: terminating in the country, so we don't have the same
Speaker 3: sort of concentration risk that some other economies would have,
Speaker 3: which unfortunately is what happened back in Mane. For some
Speaker 3: countries out in West Africa that have only one cable
Speaker 3: connecting them to the wider Internet, is an argument to
Speaker 3: be made for expanding investments in having mophi bop to
Speaker 3: cables coming into the continent. Arguably yes, and we are
Speaker 3: seeing some entities already doing that, But by and large,
Speaker 3: it also comes back down to whether or not governments
Speaker 3: actually see this as a tool that they need to
Speaker 3: invest in as a public utility, or if that's something
Speaker 3: that they contentually slet the private sector take the lead on.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Rama, After the break, Lonely, Prinzlu and
Speaker 2: Johannesburg will be joining us to discuss the economic impact
Speaker 2: of these Internet disruptions and the solutions possible for the future.
Speaker 2: Welcome back. Before the break, Rama and Young was explaining
Speaker 2: what happened in East Africa, but there are other regions
Speaker 2: on the continent that have also been affected by similar
Speaker 2: internet cuts. Lonely Princely is with us, Lonely, thanks so
Speaker 2: much for joining us. So how do you explain this.
Speaker 5: There's very limited cables coming to the continent. In our
Speaker 5: sort of context in Africa, we had three four cables
Speaker 5: in March break cutting off most of the waste Africa
Speaker 5: and it's quite difficult to then reroot it because there
Speaker 5: aren't many cables to reroot this. So the disruption is
Speaker 5: quite significant, but it still took us to almost n
Speaker 5: May so a few weeks ago for those cables to
Speaker 5: be repaired.
Speaker 4: Of course, there was my internet clients calling assess their
Speaker 4: information on their investment.
Speaker 3: So it affects your credibility.
Speaker 1: Bunking is technology driven and technology is based mostly on
Speaker 1: the availability of the internet they get. So Internet outage
Speaker 1: means that there is very little the bands can't do.
Speaker 4: So one, you don't have access to your clients that impertinent.
Speaker 3: On poond right, so you lose lots of money, lots
Speaker 3: of money, especially when it's happening for.
Speaker 6: Like twenty to forty eight hours.
Speaker 3: It becomes so frustrated. You can loose one.
Speaker 4: Hundreds and millions of said this all dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and onnly we just heard there from business owners
Speaker 2: in Ghana specifically. Are we able to quantify the impact
Speaker 2: that these disruptions are having on businesses and maybe the economy?
Speaker 5: Sure? So the instruments is that the internet industry to Africa,
Speaker 5: it's about one hundred and fifty two and twenty billion
Speaker 5: dollars to the overall GDP every year. So when the
Speaker 5: internet cuts daily, you are millions of dollars sort of
Speaker 5: being cut out of that GDP number. There's an old
Speaker 5: estimate that SAIDs with the banking sector, each hour you
Speaker 5: lose about two million dollars if the internet is cut,
Speaker 5: So that's each hour, and it's quite an old estimate,
Speaker 5: so you can see that sort of racks up. The
Speaker 5: overall impact on the economy is quite significant. And it
Speaker 5: also takes longer to get the undersea cables repaired compared
Speaker 5: to other regions because it is quite secluded and there's
Speaker 5: not a lot of ships servicing the continent.
Speaker 2: And loni in Europe or America and other developed parts
Speaker 2: of the world, we don't hear about internet cuts of
Speaker 2: this scale, maybe for a few minutes, but even that
Speaker 2: is pretty seldom heard. What's the difference here and why
Speaker 2: are African countries so vulnerable when it comes to access
Speaker 2: to the internet.
Speaker 5: When it comes to undersea cables, there's about five hundred
Speaker 5: seventy four so active under sea cables and only nine
Speaker 5: of those are active in Africa to try and connect
Speaker 5: Africa with data to Europe, data to Asia, data to
Speaker 5: the years. So you can just imagine every cut that
Speaker 5: we have is very significant in terms of the problem
Speaker 5: that arises. It's just really the limited amount of infrastructure
Speaker 5: that we have that's connecting Africa, which is the largest continent,
Speaker 5: the fastest growing continent in the world, but we still
Speaker 5: have the most limited infrastructure when it comes to the Internet,
Speaker 5: and we're the least connected.
Speaker 2: So then lonely, what's the long term solution here? Are
Speaker 2: we going to continue to see more private investment or
Speaker 2: will we potentially see more government stepping in and putting
Speaker 2: some of the public finances towards improving the infrastructure.
Speaker 5: So you have your big empty ends, you have CCOM
Speaker 5: that's also an African company investing in these cables, Talcom,
Speaker 5: but you are competing with the rest of the world
Speaker 5: when it comes to a Google or whoever, even content
Speaker 5: providers that or social media providers like a Facebook wanting
Speaker 5: to bring the cables to Africa. Mostly we have lower
Speaker 5: income users or customers, and we have fewer companies on
Speaker 5: the continent, so the economics don't always make sense for
Speaker 5: them to come here, but they still do come. The
Speaker 5: reason for that mainly is because of sort of geopolitical reasons.
Speaker 5: Wanting to have influence in the fastest growing sort of population,
Speaker 5: as we said, in the world, and you know in
Speaker 5: time you need that footprint, whether it's from the US
Speaker 5: or Asia. We saw Google most recently a week or
Speaker 5: two ago and they said they are laying another cable
Speaker 5: to connect Africa to Australia. Governments really do need to
Speaker 5: sort of push for this as well. We've seen a
Speaker 5: reason which was interesting for me Kenyan government.
Speaker 3: For the first time in more than sixteen years, and
Speaker 3: African leader is attending the White House for a state visit.
Speaker 6: The cherry on top of the cake is President William
Speaker 6: Ruter's visit to the White House, and from his joint
Speaker 6: press conference with President Joe Biden, you could get a
Speaker 6: sense that the US has committed to partnering and working
Speaker 6: with Kenya, particularly in expanding its digital ecosystem. President William
Speaker 6: Rutter raiter rated.
Speaker 4: That commitment, saying that the country will expanding their investment
Speaker 4: in things like digital technology to expand access to all
Speaker 4: kenyons and tap into that digital economy.
Speaker 5: There was also a big promise of a one gigawe
Speaker 5: data center, which is you know, almost unfancible for the region.
Speaker 5: So governments do need to be active and also invest
Speaker 5: from the east side, but just be active to you know,
Speaker 5: approach these sort of more tack giants in the US
Speaker 5: in Asia and see what sort of relationships can be
Speaker 5: built and what can be sort of agreed upon to
Speaker 5: try and connect our continent. The toaster.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much to Rama and Loni for joining us
Speaker 2: today on the podcast, as they were mentioning we have
Speaker 2: seen internet penetration across the continent improve dramatically over the
Speaker 2: past few years, but there is still much more investment
Speaker 2: that needs to come in order to expand the connectivity
Speaker 2: and to ensure that these disruptions don't completely set back
Speaker 2: economies and businesses as they have done in some parts
Speaker 2: of the continent. So still slightly a ways to go there.
Speaker 2: This program was produced by Leone Uadrago with the help
Speaker 2: of tiwa Adebayo, Moses mozart Zaou and Echo Donto. The
Speaker 2: Next Africa podcast is available every week wherever you usually
Speaker 2: get your podcast. I'm Jennifer's Abasaga. Thank you so much,
Speaker 2: as always for listening.