Botswana Internet Connectivity Disrupted by BGP Instability

Botswana experienced a brief but notable internet connectivity disruption on Sunday, July 20, 2026. The event, which lasted approximately 50 minutes, was characterized by instability in the network’s control plane routing protocols. The disruption began at 15:40 UTC and concluded by 16:30 UTC.

Technical Details

The disruption registered a severity score of 118. The primary affected signal was the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which governs how network prefixes are advertised and routed across the internet. The BGP signal recorded a drop of 2% from its peak visibility during the observation window.

Other network health indicators showed concurrent deviations. Active probing for ICMP reachability across IPv4 address blocks showed an 8% drop. A separate backscatter measurement signal, which serves as a proxy for aggregate connectivity, recorded a more significant 63% decline from its peak.

Reported Cause

The cause of the disruption has not been publicly attributed.

Network connectivity was reported restored by the end of the observation period.