The US Embassy in Tanzania has closed for two days because of an internet outage which hit East African countries on Sunday.
“Due to degraded network service nationwide, the embassy will remain closed to the public,” the embassy said on an X (formerly Twitter) post on Monday.
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…
— US Embassy Tanzania (@usembassytz) May 13, 2024
Consular appointments for Tuesday and Wednesday were cancelled and rebooked for a later date. The embassy said it would remain accessible for handling emergency cases involving American citizens and visa collections.
Businesses and homes in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and seven other countries are experiencing slow internet speeds following a cut on deep-sea fibre cables at Mtunzini, a small coastal town in South Africa.
Read: East African countries hit by major internet outage
The fault affected submarine cables serving the East and Southern Africa, largely privately controlled Seacom and East Africa Submarine System (Eassy).
Internet monitoring group Netblocks said Tanzania and the French island of Mayotte were the worst hit by the outage.
Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) said it was working on an alternative route to reinstate connectivity to the country’s major telecom networks while the recovery process of the deep-sea cables was being addressed.
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