(Ecofin Agency) - Countries in Africa have been facing significant internet disruptions over the past five days. The problem, we learned, is due to technical incidents affecting three of the main undersea cables connecting the countries.

Moov Africa's divisions in Benin and Côte d'Ivoire are leveraging the current internet outage crisis across Africa to expand their customer base. These operators remain fully operational despite the widespread connectivity issues impacting their competitors, prompting them to ramp up efforts to attract new clients.

To cater to the varying needs of potential customers, both companies have recently extended their store opening hours throughout the weekend. As efforts continue to fully restore internet services on the damaged high-speed telecom infrastructures, Moov Africa Benin and Moov Africa Côte d'Ivoire anticipate a significant increase in their subscriber bases in the coming days. This potential boost in clientele is expected to strengthen their standings in their respective markets.

In Benin, Moov Africa held 34.06% of the mobile telephony market share as of September 30, 2023, according to statistics from the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications and Posts (ARCEP). Its competitors, MTN and Celtiis, held 55.42% and 10.52% market shares, respectively.

In Côte d'Ivoire, Moov Africa controlled only 18.8% of mobile telephony subscribers in the second quarter of 2023, as per the Telecommunications/ICT Regulatory Authority (ARTCI) statistics. Its competitors, Orange and MTN, held 47.4% and 33.8% of the market shares, respectively.