IODA data indicates a ~7 hour disruption of the Internet in Kenya that had spillover effects in Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania. The multi-country nature of the event’s impact on Internet connectivity is indicative of disruptions to critical Internet infrastructure connecting several countries like a terrestrial cable, subsea cable, or a cable landing station.
Internet Service Providers and the Communications Authority of Kenya provided very little information on which cables were impacted and what actions were being taken in response to the June 24, 2025 Internet disruption in Kenya in comparison to the subsea cable outage affecting Kenya on May 12th-14th Internet disruption. The difference in how the outage and response was communicated is stark and notable and raises questions as to whether there was really a subsea cable outage on June 24, 2025 affecting Kenya.
Based on repair times reported for previous legitimated subsea cable outages, such as the ones that affected the African continent on May 12-14th and March 14-21st, it is unlikely that cable repair crews were notified, an available crew embarked and navigated to the repair location, and then completed the repair within the span of the ~7 hours of the June 25, 2024 disruption in Kenya.
Comparing the temporal signatures of the June 24, 2025 Kenya Internet disruption to our longitudinal study comparing spontaneous outages to government-directed shutdowns, we find that the Internet disruption in Kenya shows 3 signatures of a government-directed shutdown, 2 signatures of a spontaneous outage, and 1 signature that was inconclusive.
Via IODA
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