Sierra Leone experienced a national-scale internet connectivity disruption on Friday, August 22, 2026. The event began at 12:50 UTC and lasted for approximately two hours and fifteen minutes, ending at 15:05 UTC. The disruption was most pronounced in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) control plane, which recorded a severity score of 174.
Technical Details
The primary affected signal was BGP, which measures the control plane visibility and routing stability of internet prefixes. The BGP signal recorded a drop in its median value during the event period. Concurrently, the ping-slash24 signal, which measures ICMP reachability across IPv4 /24 network blocks, showed a 7% drop from its peak value. The Merit Network Telescope (merit-nt) signal, a proxy for aggregate connectivity based on backscatter traffic, recorded a more significant 75% drop from its observed peak.
The cause has not been publicly attributed.
Connectivity was reported restored by the end of the observation window.
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