Angola: Unitel Cyberattack Exposes Angola's Strategic Vulnerabilities

What the report says

AllAfrica, carrying an analysis by Maka Angola, reported that Unitel, Angola’s largest telecoms operator, suffered a cyberattack that pushed major service disruption into a second day. The outage affected voice calls, mobile data and internet access nationwide, with consequences for family communications, internet-based businesses, payments, commercial activity, ride-hailing and other daily services. Unitel, which serves about 21 million customers, said in a July 28 statement that it detected the attack at 2:20 a.m. and activated response and containment measures while its technical and cybersecurity teams worked to restore service.

Maka Angola reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, that Unitel chief executive Amílcar Safeca was waiting for foreign specialists to arrive urgently because the company did not have sufficient internal capacity to recover all affected systems. Unitel had not disclosed the type of attack, the full scale of damage, whether customer data was affected, or when full restoration would occur, according to the report.

The article said the incident comes as Unitel is fully state-controlled and on the eve of a planned stock exchange listing. It noted that the Angolan state holds Unitel through IGAPE and Sonangol-linked entities, after President João Lourenço nationalised stakes formerly associated with Isabel dos Santos’s Vidatel and Geni, linked to Gen. Leopoldino “Dino” Fragoso do Nascimento, in 2022. Maka argued that the listing makes clearer disclosure of operational and security risks more urgent.

The report framed the outage as a warning about Angola’s critical infrastructure. It said Movicel is no longer a strong fallback after a steep subscriber decline, while Africell operates in only six of 21 provinces, leaving many users with no effective nationwide alternative to Unitel.