Kenyan Firms Disrupted by Global Microsoft Outage

A global Microsoft outage has disrupted access to email and other business communication services for several Kenyan firms, including banks, insurers, and government agencies. The disruption, which began late Thursday, has affected Microsoft's video conferencing platform Teams, file-sharing service SharePoint, and artificial intelligence assistant Copilot. As a result, organisations were unable to communicate with customers through their usual email channels, leading to delayed services such as insurance claims processing.

The outage has had a significant impact on Kenyan businesses, with some experiencing delayed emails by several hours. Standard Chartered Bank Kenya informed customers through text messages that their email services were currently unavailable and provided alternative contact methods. Insurer CIC Group also reported disruptions to its email services, directing customers to its mobile application and telephone numbers to access services.

The Communications Authority of Kenya and Stanbic Bank were among other organisations affected by the disruption. The government agency announced on X that its email services were temporarily unavailable due to the global Microsoft 365 outage. The outage spread from an initial impact reported in the United States and the Americas to multiple regions worldwide, causing widespread disruptions.

Microsoft attributed the problem to elevated load on its infrastructure across multiple regions, contributing to connectivity errors. The tech company implemented fixes but was still working to restore services after some changes failed to deliver the expected improvement. Microsoft stated it was identifying alternative measures to increase capacity but did not provide a timeline for full restoration.

The company confirmed that it was not aware of any malicious activity behind the disruption. By 3 pm EAT on Friday, outage-tracking website Downdetector was still reporting problems with Outlook and Microsoft 365 in Kenya. Microsoft 365 is the company's cloud-based subscription service that includes applications such as Outlook, Teams, and Word, used by over 430 million people worldwide.

The disruption also had knock-on effects on other technology platforms. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, said it was investigating an issue affecting its connections to Microsoft's services, which had caused some tools to malfunction. Rival Anthropic, which owns the Claude chatbot, also reported problems linked to the outage.

This latest incident adds to a series of disruptions affecting Microsoft's productivity and cloud services over the past year. Microsoft experienced a disruption to its Azure cloud platform in October 2025, a prolonged outage in September 2026, and another outage in January 2026, highlighting the need for robust measures to prevent such incidents in the future.

Key points

• Microsoft outage disrupts email and meetings for Kenyan businesses
• Outage affects over 430 million Microsoft 365 users worldwide
• Disruption is among the most significant incidents to hit Microsoft's cloud-based services