Undersea cables, commonly known as submarine cables, play a crucial role in Africa’s digital infrastructure.
These cables serve as the fundamental infrastructure of the global internet, transmitting over 99 percent of the world’s data traffic across oceans and continents.
In the early 2000s, fiber optic submarine cables arrived on the African continent, linking African countries to global telecommunications networks and heralding a transformative era for internet connectivity across the region.
These cables have revolutionized internet access and affordability, significantly boosting connectivity across the continent and cultivating a vibrant, technology driven ecosystem that ignites innovation.
Today, there are seventy-seven cable networks connecting Africa to the global telecommunications network, and new cables continue to be announced.
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How The Internet Travels Across Oceans
Despite these gains, new challenges-specifically undersea cable cuts-have arisen, resulting in internet disruptions across many African countries.
The most severe outage occurred in March 2024, when ten African countries, mostly in West and Southern Africa, lost connection to the internet because of disruptions in four undersea cables: the West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and the South Atlantic Telecommunications cable number 3 (SAT3).
A few months later, an outage was reported in East African countries after cuts were reported in the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) and the Seacom cable.
These incidents demonstrated the vulnerability and fragility of Africa’s internet infrastructure and underscored the need for a robust and resilient agenda for this foundational digital infrastructure.
The African continent has identified technology as essential for digital transformation and a tool to unlock new pathways for economic growth, innovation, and job creation.
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In the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy, the continent’s leaders lay out a vision and road map for harnessing technology and innovation to meet Africa’s development goals.
The document calls for ubiquitous connectivity for all Africans, noting the significant role of submarine cables.
The Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy sets an agenda for artificial intelligence (AI) to bring socioeconomic change to African people.
Similarly, at the national level, many African countries have developed national strategies and policies that identify digital technology as a tool for socioeconomic growth.
For these goals to be achieved, innovators, business leaders, students, and all others in Africa need access to the affordable and reliable internet that undersea cables can provide.
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Undersea cables constitute a critical component of the internet delivery chain, serving as an integral part of the first mile infrastructure that facilitates internet access to a country.
They connect and transmit data to the middle mile-terrestrial networks, such as national backbones.
These subsequently link to the last mile, facilitating connections to the end user via mobile or fixed broadband services.
The significance of undersea cables to Africa, therefore, cannot be underestimated and necessitates strong governance (considered part of the invisible mile) and management to guarantee that Africa’s internet ecosystem flourishes and delivers the anticipated digital benefits.
Africa’s Undersea Cable Landscape
There are an estimated 600 undersea cables globally, with seventy-seven of them landing on the African continent.
Cables landing in Africa are dispersed across thirty-seven of the continent’s thirty-eight coastal countries; Eritrea is the exception.
Egypt, South Africa, Djibouti, Nigeria, and Kenya have the most cable landings and are regarded as regional hubs.
Undersea cables not only benefit Africa’s coastal countries but also connect landlocked countries through terrestrial cross-border connections.
For example, Kenya has cross-border links to neighboring Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Cables landing in Africa typically observe three routes: a West African route that connects to Europe via the Atlantic Ocean, an East African route that connects to Asia via the Indian Ocean, and a North African route that connects countries stretching from Djibouti to Morocco.
The North African route heralded the arrival of undersea cables to the continent with the landing of the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 3 (SEA-ME-WE 3) cable in 2000.
SEA-ME-WE 3 (now retired) connected Egypt and Djibouti to global telecommunications networks.
However, it was not until the landing of the South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable/South Africa Far East (SAT-3/WASC/SAFE) cable in 2001 that high-speed internet connectivity reached sub-Saharan Africa.
SAT-3/WASC/SAFE connected South Africa to Europe, establishing the West African route.
The East African route was initiated with SEACOM’s arrival in 2005, followed by the East African Marine System (TEAMS) and Lower Indian Ocean Network (LION) in 2010 and EASSy in the same year.
In 2023, Africa’s routing underwent a significant transformation with the introduction of the 2Africa Cable, which encircles the continent.
New undersea cables continue to land in Africa.
In 2024, new cables were announced, such as Umoja, which will be the first undersea cable to connect Africa directly to Australia, and the Indonesian Cable Express IV.
The ownership of these cables varies, encompassing both public and private sector entities.
A majority of cable projects are carried out by a consortium, typically formed by parties interested in utilizing the cable.
For instance, the 2Africa cable consortium includes eight partners: Bayobab (formerly MTN GlobalConnect), Center3, China Mobile International, Meta, Orange, Saudi Telecom Group, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, and West Indian Ocean Cable Company.
Earlier cable projects in Africa, such as EASSy, received support from governments and multilateral organizations.
Over the past ten years, there has been a notable transition from investments made by African telecommunications companies and governments to those by major international technology firms. investments in Africa’s digital economy.
The proliferation of new undersea cables is driven by various factors, including the continent’s burgeoning digital economy, which is increasing demand for secure, affordable, and fast internet.
Already, Africa’s undersea cables have increased internet access and internet speeds.
Google anticipates that the Equiano cable will enhance internet speeds in Nigeria, South Africa, and Namibia while also lowering internet costs in these countries.
The company reported that the cable could increase Nigeria’s and South Africa’s internet penetration rates by 7 percentage points and Namibia’s by 9 percentage points between 2021 and 2025.
Furthermore, it projected the cable will generate 1.6 million jobs in Nigeria, 180,000 in South Africa, and 21,000 in Namibia.
Other studies show that higher internet penetration rates resulting from undersea cables can increase GDP growth, productivity, and employment.
The proliferation of faster and cheaper internet, in turn, has propelled the growth of Africa’s technology innovation hubs.
Innovation hubs are cocreation spaces that provide startups with the resources to ideate, build, and scale solutions.
Research shows that there are over 1,000 technology hubs in the continent helping drive economic growth, including Kenya’s iHub and Nigeria’s CcHUB.
A New Threat to Africa’s Digital Transformation: Undersea Cable Disruptions
A new challenge-cable cuts-is threatening the gains from undersea cables.
In 2024, cable cuts in West Africa cost Nigeria over $590 million in four days.
The repair of one cable is estimated at $2 million; the 2024 West African outage involved four cables, leading to an estimated cost of $8 million.
Undersea cables are vulnerable to the following main threats:
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