Mali experiences multi-day BGP routing disruption

Mali experienced a significant disruption to its internet routing infrastructure beginning on July 30, 2026, and lasting for more than two days. The event primarily affected the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which governs how networks exchange routing information. Connectivity was reported restored by the early hours of August 2.

Technical Details

The disruption to Mali’s BGP control plane began at 21:25 UTC on July 30 and concluded at 00:30 UTC on August 2, lasting approximately 2.1 days. The event registered a severity score of 3,494 based on the BGP median signal, which measures the visibility of network prefixes in the global routing table. The number of visible BGP routes from Mali remained stable at 347 throughout the event, indicating a persistent but consistent routing state.

Other internet measurement signals showed varied impacts. The Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) backscatter signal, an aggregate proxy for connectivity, recorded a 73% drop from its peak value. Traffic volume measurements (gtr-norm) deviated from their expected baseline, showing a 36% decline from peak levels. Active probing for IPv4 reachability (ping-slash24) showed a more modest 4% reduction in observed reachable networks.

The cause has not been publicly attributed.

All observed metrics had returned to normal levels by the end of the observation window.