Microsoft is still recovering from one of its biggest outages in years. Since Thursday afternoon, millions of people around the world, including users in Ghana, have struggled to send or receive email in Outlook, join Teams calls, or open files stored on Microsoft's cloud.
Outage tracker Downdetector recorded problems in 74 countries and territories, including parts of Africa. By Thursday evening it had received about 140,000 reports about Outlook alone, according to GBC. Microsoft says more than 430 million people use its Microsoft 365 apps.
What stopped working
Microsoft's own service notice (reference MO1550821) lists these services as affected:
- → Outlook / Exchange Online: email and calendars
- → Microsoft Teams
- → SharePoint Online and OneDrive files
- → Microsoft 365 Copilot
- → Microsoft Defender XDR, a security tool used by IT teams
Not everyone lost everything. Some people could still chat and hold meetings in Teams while their email was stuck.
When it started (Ghana time)
- → Thursday 12 November, about 4:17pm: Microsoft began looking into email connection problems.
- → Thursday, about 6:26pm: it became a wider Microsoft 365 problem, hitting several services at once.
- → Friday 13 November, about 1:05pm: Microsoft reported "encouraging recovery progress", but warned that "some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue."
At the time of writing on Friday afternoon, Microsoft had not said that everything was fully back to normal.
Was it a hack?
No. Microsoft says the outage was not caused by a cyberattack. It blames "elevated load" on its systems. A large number of its servers suddenly became unavailable, which pushed extra traffic onto the servers still running and overloaded them.
To fix it, Microsoft paused updates, moved traffic around and restarted affected servers. It also looked at whether undoing recent configuration changes would help. It has not yet published a final root cause.
Ghana: what users saw
In Ghana, people using work and school email on Microsoft 365 reported messages that would not send or arrive, and calendars that would not load. The University of Ghana posted an alert on its website saying it was aware of the outage affecting Outlook, Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams and Copilot. It warned that:
"Messages sent during the disruption may remain in users' outboxes, be returned to the sender, or need to be resent after services are restored."
The university advised staff and students to use phone calls or text messages when they need to reach campus offices urgently.
Banks in Ghana were affected too. On Friday afternoon, GCB Bank sent customers an SMS saying that "due to a global Microsoft outage, our emails may be unavailable". It asked customers to reach it on WhatsApp instead and reminded them: "Never share your PIN or OTP with anyone."
Across Africa: banks turned to WhatsApp and phone lines
Several African companies that run their email on Microsoft told customers to use other channels:
- → Kenya: Equity Bank, UBA Kenya, Stanbic Bank Kenya and Standard Chartered Kenya lost email access on Friday and asked customers to call, use WhatsApp or contact their relationship managers. None of them reported problems with payments or mobile banking.
- → South Africa: the tax office SARS, Absa bank, power company Eskom and airline FlySafair were among those affected.
- → Zambia and Namibia: Stanbic Bank Zambia and Standard Bank Namibia said only email was affected and that banking services were working normally.
The outage has also restarted a debate about how much African businesses depend on cloud services run from outside the continent.
What to do if you are affected
- → Don't keep resending the same email. Microsoft extended its email "timeout" window to 48 hours, so many delayed messages should still arrive. Check your Outbox and Sent folders later.
- → For anything urgent, call or text, or use WhatsApp. Don't rely on email until things settle.
- → Check official updates from the Microsoft 365 Status account on X (@MSFT365Status). IT staff can check "Service health" in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.
- → Payments have kept working so far. The banks that reported problems said only their email was down. Payments and mobile banking were not affected.
Report scams to the Cyber Security Authority: call or text 292, or WhatsApp 0501603111.
TechTrendi will update this story as Microsoft restores full service.
Sources: Microsoft service notices as reported by BleepingComputer; GBC Ghana Online; University of Ghana; Al Jazeera; NBC News; Innovation Village; TechCabal; BusinessDay.