A major outage at Cloudflare, a leading internet infrastructure provider, disrupted access to several global platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, and Claude AI, in Zimbabwe on November 18, 2025. Users reported “internal server error” messages and slow loading times, impacting online communication, digital marketing, and AI-assisted work sessions.
The outage, which started around 2:00 PM Zimbabwe time, affected websites relying on Cloudflare’s content delivery, cyber-protection, and uptime stability services. Cloudflare confirmed the incident, stating they were investigating an issue affecting multiple customers.
The disruption highlights Zimbabwe’s digital ecosystem dependence on global infrastructure providers and raises concerns about centralized internet vulnerabilities. Most platforms, including X and ChatGPT, are now back online, with Cloudflare attributing the outage to a bug in the Bot Management feature.
On November 18 Cloudflare experienced a service outage, triggered by an issue with a Bot Management feature, impacting multiple Cloudflare services. Here's a detailed breakdown of what happened. https://t.co/7WArlr5ghI
— Cloudflare (@Cloudflare) November 18, 2025
