Equatorial Guinea is struggling to pay the international Internet bill: BEAC and Banque de France implicated
August 29th 2022
In their Digital Report 2022, Kepios and We Are Social indicate that Equatorial Guinea has 386,600 Internet users. That is a penetration rate of 26.2% for a population of 1.47 million inhabitants.
The authorities of Equatorial Guinea indicated on Friday August 26 that the country was at risk of suffering an interruption of Internet services, due to the effective non-payment of its supplier, whose bill has still not been settled. According to the same source, blockages and delays in the transfer of funds from the Central Bank of Central African States (BEAC) are the cause of this situation.
“ If the Central Bank of France does not authorize GITGE [Equatorial Guinea Telecommunications Infrastructure Manager ] transfers via the BEAC for the payment of optical fiber in the country, in two weeks Equatorial Guinea will be without Internet ”, posted on his personal twitter account, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, vice president and son of the country’s current leader.
Equatorial Guinea is connected to a single international fiber optic submarine system. This is Africa Coast to Europe which runs along the coast of West Africa and connects France to South Africa with several landing points in various countries in Africa, including Côte d’Ivoire , Cameroon and Gabon.
Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue asked the Prime Minister, Francisco Pascual Obama Asue, for the creation of a commission responsible for providing “ an immediate solution to this problem ”. This information comes as the BEAC continues with the new foreign exchange regulations, which since April 2019, require economic operators in the countries under its authority to comply with strict rules in terms of foreign exchange regulations.
It is not clear that Equatorial Guinea’s national telecom infrastructure manager failed to meet the requirements of this regulation. Even if on the whole the operators continue to deplore delays, such a deadlock situation with no apparent solution has not yet been raised in one of the countries. It should also be remembered that the current situation allows the only Hispanic country of the CEMAC, to put a layer on the FCFA and the system of management and cooperation which frames it. In Malabo, the need for a new monetary dynamic remains constant.
For the moment, neither the telecommunications operator concerned, nor the Central Bank have expressed an opinion on this question. The consequences of an Internet shutdown are always harmful, and this can be even more so for countries like Equatorial Guinea which depend on the outside for a large part of its consumption. Beyond the negative impact on telecommunications companies, the Internet shutdown will also harm the activity of strategic sectors such as banking.
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