Regional Report · East Africa

East Africa & the Cairo Summit

A regional visual report on digital infrastructure security, resilience and coordination across connected systems.

Research and visual reporting by Gregory L. Ewing

The report

Connectivity is only as strong as the system behind it.

Digital infrastructure does not stop at national borders. Subsea cables, terrestrial fiber, cloud platforms, data centers, electricity systems and cybersecurity dependencies link countries together. Regional resilience therefore requires coordination as well as capacity.

This report treats East African digital infrastructure as a connected system and asks how regional institutions can turn shared dependence into shared resilience.

See the place behind the network.

Dar es Salaam and the Tanzanian coastRoland / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Modern subsea cable-laying vessel Leonardo da VinciIan Gratton / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Regional infrastructure intelligence

A regional system has shared dependencies

2 cablesSEACOM and EASSy cut in one May 2024 incident

5 IXPsEast African exchanges tracked through the outage

80%Commercial data-center capacity concentrated in Kenya and Ethiopia

≈3 MWEstimated Tanzanian commercial data-center capacity

38%Africa-wide Internet use in 2024, for regional context

Actual reported snapshots, not a composite resilience score. The concentration figures show why cable diversity, terrestrial rerouting, exchange points, local compute and reliable power must be planned as one regional system.

At a glance

What resilience looks like.

RegionalOutages and cyber incidents can cross borders through shared systems.

CoordinationIncident response improves when roles are established before a crisis.

SecurityPhysical resilience and cybersecurity belong in the same planning framework.

01 · LandingInternational capacity enters the country.

02 · BackhaulTerrestrial routes move traffic inland.

03 · ExchangeNetworks interconnect and route traffic.

04 · ContinuityAlternate systems keep services operating.

The region is already interconnected

International routes and digital platforms make national networks part of a larger regional system. That creates economic value, but it also means infrastructure risk cannot always be contained inside one jurisdiction.

Resilience needs common language

Regional planning becomes more effective when governments, operators and infrastructure owners share definitions of critical systems, incident thresholds and response responsibilities. Coordination is an operational capability, not just a diplomatic statement.

From declaration to implementation

A useful regional framework should translate principles into measurable practices: route-diversity reviews, continuity exercises, cyber incident coordination, repair preparedness and transparent assessment of shared infrastructure dependencies.

Regional implementation

Coordination becomes resilience only when it is operational.

The regional framework becomes measurable through exercises, route reviews, repair planning and shared incident thresholds—not through declarations alone.

RoutesReview shared failure domainsThe 2024 dual-cable cut showed how separate systems can still fail in one geographic event.

ExchangesProtect local traffic pathsInternet Society tracked traffic at exchanges in DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda during the outage.

ComputeReduce capacity concentrationKenya and Ethiopia hold roughly four-fifths of commercial data-center capacity in the regional market brief.

Sources & methodology

Measured events, market snapshots and policy analysis.

The cable-cut and exchange-point findings come from the Internet Society’s 2024 East Africa Submarine Cable Outage Report. Data-center concentration and Tanzania’s estimated capacity come from the East Africa Data Center Markets Brief. The continental Internet-use benchmark comes from the ITU’s Africa digital-development report. Regional resilience conclusions are Ewing Journal analysis.

← Previous Ewing Journal Home Next →