Cyberattack hits Angola’s largest telco hours before landmark stock debut

Angola’s largest telecommunications operator, Unitel, said Tuesday it was hit by a cyberattack in the early hours of the morning that has left millions of people nationwide without voice services, mobile data, and internet access.

The attack struck less than 24 hours before the formerly state-owned company was due to make its landmark debut on the country’s stock exchange. 

Unitel said it detected the incident shortly after 2 a.m. local time. “Response and containment mechanisms were immediately activated, and technical and cybersecurity teams were mobilized” to mitigate the incident and restore services, the company said.

“At this time, services remain disrupted, and all necessary actions are underway to stabilize and fully restore the network,” Unitel added. The company did not offer a timeline for when services would return online, nor did it comment on the nature of the attack.

Network measurement data from RIPE NCC reviewed by Recorded Future News show that Unitel’s IP prefixes remained announced to the global internet throughout the incident, meaning the routers that connect the company to the rest of the internet stayed online.

Those prefixes would usually disappear in the case of disruptions originating from an external source, such as an upstream connectivity cut or a volumetric DDoS attack. That suggests the cause was instead an incident disabling core internal systems.

Traffic telemetry from Cloudflare Radar shows Unitel’s traffic collapsing sharply from around the time of detection and remaining well below baseline into Wednesday. The disruption appears specific to Unitel, with no other Angolan network operator showing any degradation across the same period.

The outage has also disrupted point-of-sale payment terminals running on Unitel’s network, impacting business communications and digital services dependent on internet access, according to Angolan business publication Expansão.

IPO proceeds despite outage

Unitel began trading Wednesday on the Angolan securities exchange, known as BODIVA, in what became the largest initial public offering in Angola’s capital market history.

Unitel put its subscriber base at “more than 21 million” in Tuesday’s statement, though its own 2025 annual report cites 20.8 million customers and a 76% market share. Angola’s population stands at approximately 40 million, according to U.N. estimates for 2026.

The Angolan state, through its asset management institute IGAPE, sold a 15% stake in the company. The offer, which ran from July 6 to July 24, was oversubscribed at a rate of 120.72%, with more than 11,000 investors participating.

The listing is a centerpiece of the current President João Lourenço’s privatization program, which aims to reduce state dominance in the former Marxist–Leninist economy and attract foreign capital.

Unitel became the first non-financial company listed on the Angolan exchange, and its successful subscription was widely seen as a test of investor appetite for Angolan state assets and a potential precursor to the listing of larger entities, including national oil company Sonangol.

The company came under state control in 2022 after Angolan authorities seized shareholdings previously owned by Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former President José Eduardo dos Santos, as part of Lourenço’s broader effort to unwind business networks associated with his predecessor’s 38-year administration.

Trading proceeded Wednesday despite the ongoing outage, valuing the company at $2.14 billion and raising around $321 million for the government’s stake in the business.

Neither BODIVA nor Angola’s capital markets regulator had issued any public statement about the incident as of the time of publication. Angolan authorities have not made any statements regarding the timing of the attack or whether it was linked to the IPO.

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