Distant wars pose risks for Africa’s digital services
App outages, business disruptions and internet crashes expose Africa’s vulnerability to being reliant on digital infrastructure beyond the continent.
The popular ride-hailing and food-ordering app Yango experienced temporary delays in Côte d'Ivoire last month due to issues elsewhere in the world, not local bandwidth or power outages. The disruptions were caused by operational changes in the Gulf after Russian data centers in Russia were targeted by Ukrainian drone strikes in October.
Yango relies on infrastructure provided by Yandex and Amazon, including servers in the UAE. In mid-September, Amazon faced outages after Iranian drone strikes damaged one of its data center zones in the UAE. Egyptian news publisher EnterpriseAM also faced a website outage for over a day in March after moving to a different hosting location and recovering data from its own systems.
Digital infrastructure has become a target in conflicts, raising questions about African businesses' reliance on overseas servers and cables connecting them to the continent. Recent attacks on internet cables in the Red Sea and attacks by Yemen's Houthi forces have further highlighted the vulnerability of African digital services.
Technology policy researcher Jane Munga warns that what happens elsewhere can affect Africa, emphasizing the need for digital sovereignty. African governments and companies are investing in local data centers and cloud services to gain more control over their data and digital economies. However, experts argue that diversifying systems across multiple sites, both within and outside national borders, is crucial to protecting African digital services from disruption.
Written by urgent.news from Semafor's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
