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MainOne, a leading provider of submarine cable communications in West Africa, has declared a force majeure on its services after the company’s submarine cable system developed a fault off the coast of Portugal, according to a statement released on Tuesday.

“Early in the morning of Sunday June 18th, 2017, we experienced a fault on our submarine cable system, 3000KM offshore Portugal,” the company said. “The outage, the first of its kind in 7 years since our cable system came into operations, has caused disruptions in service to our international connectivity customers in West Africa.”

MainOne said it mobilized a repair vessel from France early on Monday morning to recover the affected sections of the submarine cable in the Atlantic Ocean and effect necessary repairs. The current estimated time for the repairs is 14 days.

“Whilst this is an event of Force Majeure, being beyond our control in the ordinary and normal course of business, we have in the interim, made available existing restoration capacity and have secured additional capacity to offer temporary relief to our customers, where feasible,” the company said.

“We will continue to provide updates on the progress of the repair works and we assure our customers that all hands are on deck to fully restore all services and the MainOne quality that they have come to rely on.”

Since its launch in 2010, MainOne’s submarine cable system has been a leading provider of wholesale Internet services to major telecom operators, Internet service providers, government agencies, large enterprises, and education institutions in West Africa. The company also operates one of the largest data centres in Africa out of a facility in Lekki, Lagos.