Iraq accounts for 18 of 19 government-directed shutdowns globally, while conflict in Ethiopia and power disruptions across Africa underscore the fragility of Internet connectivity
Dubai, UAE, November, 2026 – New analysis of global Internet disruptions during the third quarter of 2026 by Cloudflare, the leading connectivity cloud company, reveals how power failures, government-directed Internet shutdowns, geopolitical conflict and natural disasters continue to expose vulnerabilities in the systems underpinning digital connectivity. The findings have particular relevance for the Middle East and Africa (MEA), where disruptions in Iraq and Ethiopia, alongside power-related outages in several African countries, highlight the importance of resilient digital infrastructure.
Cloudflare’s Q3 2026 Internet Disruptions Report, published through its Cloudflare Radar platform, recorded 49 Internet disruptions worldwide between July and September. Government-directed shutdowns accounted for 19 incidents, including 18 in Iraq linked to national examinations. Power outages were the second-largest cause, accounting for 14 incidents across 10 countries, while natural disasters contributed five disruptions.
The findings underscore how Internet availability depends on much more than telecommunications infrastructure. Electricity supply, physical connectivity, government policies, environmental conditions and the resilience of individual networks all play a critical role in keeping businesses, governments and communities connected.
High-Level Key Findings:
- Iraq accounts for the overwhelming majority of government-directed shutdowns: Iraq recorded 18 of the 19 government-directed Internet shutdowns globally during Q3. The restrictions were timed around national examinations, with individual shutdowns lasting between 15 and 90 minutes. Most occurred between August 26 and September 28, demonstrating how government decisions can directly affect national connectivity.
- Conflict disrupts connectivity in Ethiopia: Renewed fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region coincided with a government-directed Internet shutdown lasting 10 days. Traffic in the affected region fell by 100%, while the impact was also visible at national level, with HTTP traffic declining by up to 30%. The incident highlights the vulnerability of communications infrastructure during periods of political instability and humanitarian crisis.
- Power failures expose infrastructure vulnerabilities across Africa: Power-related Internet disruptions were recorded in Kenya, Eswatini, Botswana and Gabon, among other countries. Eswatini also experienced planned load-shedding, illustrating how constrained electricity supplies can affect connectivity. Globally, Cloudflare Radar recorded 14 power-related disruptions across 10 countries during the quarter.
- Infrastructure failures can have nationwide consequences: A power failure at an interconnection facility in Honduras affected at least 11 major providers. During the approximately three-hour outage, national HTTP traffic dropped by 63%. The incident demonstrates how concentrated traffic exchange points can become single points of failure when adequate redundancy is unavailable.
- Natural disasters threaten digital infrastructure: Super Typhoon Bavi followed Sinlaku by less than three months, resulting in two major storm-related connectivity disruptions in Guam within a single year. Meanwhile, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Colombia caused a four-and-a-half-day Internet disruption after damage to fibre-optic infrastructure compounded the wider impact of the disaster.
- Even established networks remain vulnerable: A cooling system failure at a Phoenix data centre caused a near-total drop in Internet traffic from Namecheap, while Portugal’s MEO experienced an outage following a reported mass attack. These incidents demonstrate that technical failures and security-related disruptions can affect networks irrespective of their underlying infrastructure maturity.
Regional Context and Implications:
The Q3 findings highlight the interconnected nature of digital resilience across the Middle East and Africa. For governments and businesses in the region, reliable Internet connectivity is increasingly fundamental to economic activity, public services, financial transactions, communications and the delivery of essential services.
Iraq’s examination-related shutdowns are particularly significant, accounting for 18 of the 19 government-directed disruptions recorded worldwide. While each incident was relatively short, the repeated restrictions demonstrate how connectivity can be affected by policy decisions and how disruptions can extend beyond their immediate purpose to affect individuals, businesses and digital services.
In Ethiopia, the 10-day disruption in Tigray illustrates the wider consequences of connectivity restrictions during conflict. Access to the Internet is not simply a commercial requirement; it also enables communities to access information, coordinate assistance and maintain communications during humanitarian emergencies.
Power-related disruptions in Kenya, Botswana, Eswatini and Gabon further reinforce the importance of addressing dependencies between electricity and telecommunications infrastructure. Internet connectivity relies on continuous power for mobile base stations, routers, data centres and interconnection facilities. Consequently, investments in backup power, network redundancy, alternative connectivity routes and geographically distributed infrastructure are essential components of digital resilience.
For enterprises operating across MEA, these developments also underline the importance of business continuity planning. Organisations increasingly dependent on cloud applications, digital payments, connected operations and distributed workforces need to consider how local infrastructure failures can affect services across multiple locations and markets.
Looking Ahead:
As digital transformation, cloud adoption and AI-driven services accelerate across the Middle East and Africa, maintaining reliable connectivity will become increasingly important to regional competitiveness and economic growth.
The Q3 findings demonstrate that resilience cannot be achieved through network infrastructure alone. Governments, telecommunications providers, cloud operators and enterprises must work together to strengthen power redundancy, diversify connectivity routes, improve disaster preparedness and ensure that critical digital services can continue operating during periods of disruption.
Cloudflare Radar will continue monitoring Internet connectivity worldwide, providing visibility into disruptions and helping organisations better understand the infrastructure dependencies that underpin the global Internet.
About the Report:
Cloudflare’s Q3 2026 Internet Disruptions Report, What Took the Internet Offline in Q3 2026, examines 49 Internet disruptions recorded worldwide between July and September 2026. The analysis covers government-directed shutdowns, power outages, natural disasters, geopolitical conflict and technical failures affecting Internet connectivity.
About Cloudflare:
Cloudflare, Inc. (www.cloudflare.com / @cloudflare) is on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare’s suite of products protect and accelerate any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures 2018 list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2019. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Cloudflare has offices in Austin, TX, Champaign, IL, New York, NY, San Jose, CA, Seattle, WA, Washington, D.C., Toronto, Lisbon, London, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
