INTERNET OUTAGE

Accidental cut-off costs nation RM43 million in lost business a day

MOGADISHU

LAST month, a baby was born here with a terrible eye defect that requires treatment abroad. The infant was cleared for treatment in Turkey but before the paperwork was complete, a container ship, believed to be the Panama-flagged MSC Alice, docked outside Mogadishu port, accidentally dragging its anchor through the main fibre-optic cable connecting Somalia with the rest of the world.

Since that evening of June 24, most of the Horn of Africa nation has been cut off from the web, costing it an estimated US$10 million (RM43 million) a day in lost business, according to the government, and freezing the lives of those, like the sick child, whose hopes depend on international connections.

There were a wealthy, fortunate few with the wherewithal to get online via satellite link-ups, but the vast majority of the 6.5 million people in Somalia’s south-central region were in the dark, said Mohamed Ahmed Jama, chief executive of Dalkom, a Somali telecommunications company that is part of the consortium providing the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System.

The Internet blackout has wreaked havoc in Somalia, where decades of conflict have combined with irrepressible entrepreneurialism to create a far-flung diaspora of almost two million people who earn money abroad and send it home to relatives.