The US Embassy in Tanzania has temporarily closed its doors for two days due to a widespread internet outage affecting several East African countries.
In a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, the embassy announced the closure to the public, citing degraded network service nationwide.
All consular appointments scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday have been canceled, with plans to reschedule them for a later date.
However, the embassy will remain open for visa collections and to address emergency cases involving American citizens.
The internet disruption, which began on Sunday morning, has resulted in poor connectivity across Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.
According to metrics provided by internet monitoring group NetBlocks on Monday, Tanzania has been particularly hard hit by the outage.
Industry expert Ben Roberts explained to the BBC that the patchy service is due to faults in the undersea cables connecting the region to the rest of the world via South Africa.
As of Monday, some East Africans are still experiencing slow internet speeds, with certain telecom providers indicating that the issue has not been fully resolved yet.
