Bayobab Group CEO Frédéric Schepens.

MTN Group-owned Bayobab, a provider of pan-African digital communications solutions, suffered a major setback in the first half of the current financial year, due to significant headwinds, including the conflict in Sudan, currency volatility and undersea cable cuts.

Africa’s largest telco, MTN Group, presented its interim performance today, sayingbreakages resulted in downtime for eight significant subsea cables connecting the African continent.

In March, massive internet internet interruptions in Southern, Eastern, and WestAfrican countries because of undersea cable breakages.

At the time, Bayobab Group acknowledged disruptions affecting connectivityservices in several West African countries, due to breaks in multiple major undersea cables.

Today, Ralph Mupita, MTN Group president and CEO, said: “The impacts from these cutsincluded major simultaneous outages on the west coast of Africa of four main cables,which we successfully restored within a few days. This was achieved using existingredundant capacity links, as well as the newly installed Equiano cable.”

In this context, he continued: “Bayobab delivered a resilient financial performance withconsolidated external revenue increasing by 4.9% to $191 million (R3.4 billion)

“The conflict in Sudan and the depreciation of the naira (which influenced pricing and traffic) negatively affected the Communication Platforms’ external revenue, which increased by 5.0% year-on-year.”

Mupita added: “The Fibre segment’s external revenue was 4.6% higher, with cable cutsimpacting the conclusion and implementation of certain contracts. In H1 (first half),Bayobab secured new fixed connectivity infrastructure deals amounting to $9.4 million.”