Major internet disruption has been reported across Africa.

Widespread outages were reported on Thursday in countries across Africa including South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso.

The cause of the cable failures was not immediately clear, to the frustration of millions of customers around the continent.

The Nigerian Communications Commission which regulates the telecoms industry, said the outage was caused by damage to international undersea cables running along the West African coastline.