The Next Wave: Microsoft’s outage showed Africa’s banks had no real plan B

On Friday morning at Avenue Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, screens went blank and patients were held up by a technical issue. The hospital needed the insurer's approval, which ran through systems that used Microsoft, causing widespread disruption. By lunchtime, banks throughout Africa were reporting email outages, with no clear plan B in place.

The Microsoft outage affected users in 74 countries on Thursday, with Microsoft blaming settings applied after an update. Over 15 hours passed between Microsoft acknowledging the fault and some lenders notifying customers of the issue. Banks dealt with the outage by directing customers to alternative channels, such as WhatsApp and phone lines, but these were also run by American platforms like Meta, which had their own outage histories.

While email and mobile banking were not directly affected, much of routine banking work relied on email, making the situation a potential headache for customers.