Africa’s digital economy increasingly depends on infrastructure most people never see: the submarine cables lying across ocean floors, carrying the data that powers cloud services, payments, government systems, streaming platforms, enterprise applications, artificial intelligence tools and everyday communications. These cables are often treated as background infrastructure, but the latest work of the International Telecommunication Union’s International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience has reinforced a critical point: submarine cable resilience is now a frontline economic and strategic issue.
This is especially important for Africa.
On 14 March 2024, an underwater rockslide off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire damaged several major submarine cable systems serving West Africa, including Africa Coast to Europe, SAT-3, the West African Cable System and MainOne. The disruption affected 13 African countries along the West African seaboard, causing degraded service in some markets and near-total internet outages in others. For businesses, financial institutions, public agencies and ordinary users, the incident showed how quickly digital activity can be disrupted when connectivity depends on concentrated and insufficiently resilient routes.
The West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly had warned that submarine cable disruptions expose a major weakness in the region’s digital economy. Its Executive Secretary, Aliyu Aboki, has noted that West Africa’s existing network capacity lacks adequate resilience, even as the region’s digital economy is estimated to be worth as much as $150 billion.
This is the context in which the ITU, in partnership with the International Cable Protection Committee, established the International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience in November 2024. The Advisory Body is co-chaired by Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, H.E. Bosun Tijani, and Prof. Sandra Maximiano, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Portugal’s National Communications Authority, ANACOM. Its mandate is to improve cable maintenance, reduce damage from natural hazards and human activity, accelerate recovery after disruptions, increase redundancy and promote more sustainable practices across the submarine cable industry.
Africa has seen a major expansion in submarine cable systems over the past two decades. New landings have increased international bandwidth, improved redundancy in some markets and strengthened the continent’s connection to global internet hubs. This has helped lower the cost of international capacity and supported the growth of digital services across the continent.
But the 2024 outage showed why cable landings alone are not enough. Africa’s next connectivity challenge is not only to attract more cables to its shores, but to build the resilient inland networks, alternative routes, local interconnection points and regional digital corridors that allow capacity to keep flowing when one part of the system fails.
The ITU’s work is important because it shifts the conversation from “how many cables do we have?” to “how resilient is the system those cables support?” That distinction is critical for Africa. A country may have access to multiple submarine cables and still suffer from fragile connectivity if repairs are delayed, inland routes are weak, landing points are concentrated, traffic exchange is limited, and domestic or cross-border networks are not sufficiently redundant.
The ITU Advisory Body established three working groups to examine the issue. Each one speaks directly to Africa’s digital infrastructure challenge.
The first working group focused on timely deployment and repair. Submarine cable systems can take years to plan, approve and deploy. Repairs can also be delayed by permitting, customs processes, vessel access, maritime approvals and unclear coordination between government agencies. When a cable fails, the technical work may not be the only problem. The bigger delay may come from bureaucracy. This is a serious lesson. If digital infrastructure is now critical infrastructure, then cable repair cannot be treated as a normal administrative process. Countries need clear fast-track rules for repair vessels, landing station access, marine permits, customs clearance and emergency coordination. Telecom regulators, port authorities, maritime agencies, security institutions and environmental bodies need defined roles before a crisis occurs.
If a major cable fault affects banking, government services, cloud platforms, hospitals, airports or businesses, how quickly can the country respond?
The second working group devoted itself to risk identification, monitoring and mitigation. Submarine cables face many threats: fishing activity, ship anchoring, dredging, earthquakes, submarine landslides, climate-related risks, maritime congestion and accidental damage. Some of these risks are predictable. Others can be reduced through better coordination, awareness and monitoring.
This is where Africa’s digital resilience conversation must become more multidisciplinary. Cable protection is not only a telecom issue. It involves shipping, fisheries, ports, energy projects, coastal planning, national security and environmental management. If these actors do not coordinate, critical digital infrastructure remains exposed.
African governments should therefore treat cable routes, landing stations, terrestrial fiber corridors, data centers and Internet exchange points as part of one national and regional resilience system. Risk maps should not sit only with private operators. They should inform public infrastructure planning, maritime policy and emergency response.
The third working group is perhaps the most strategically important for Africa. It focuses on connectivity and geographic diversity. Its core message is that resilience depends on diversity: diverse routes, diverse landing points, diverse providers, diverse terrestrial paths and diverse interconnection options.
This is where our argument becomes especially important. Africa is increasingly connected to the world, but it is not yet sufficiently connected to itself.
Many submarine cable routes are commissioned by the global North and shaped by global traffic flows, commercial landing economics and connections to major international hubs. They often improve Africa’s outward connectivity to Europe, the Middle East, Asia or other global exchange points. That is valuable, but it does not automatically solve Africa’s internal connectivity problem.
The real test is whether international capacity can move efficiently and affordably across African markets. Can it reach inland cities? Can it support regional cloud zones? Can enterprises connect to neutral data centers? Can traffic between neighboring African countries stay within the continent? Can smaller operators reach Internet exchange points? Can public institutions access resilient domestic and cross-border routes?
If the answer is no, then cable capacity remains only partly useful.
This is why the next phase of Africa’s digital infrastructure agenda must go beyond cable landings. Submarine cables are entry points. The economic value is created when that capacity is distributed inland, exchanged locally, routed efficiently, connected to data centers, supported by reliable power and used by enterprises, governments and digital platforms.
Africa’s connectivity challenge has therefore moved from the coast to the middle mile.
In many markets, the problem is no longer only the absence of international bandwidth. It is fragmented national backbones, high rights-of-way costs, duplicated routes, limited open access, weak cross-border links, insufficient local traffic exchange and underdeveloped carrier-neutral infrastructure. These issues keep domestic transport expensive, reduce resilience and limit the business case for cloud, data centers and digital services.
This has direct implications for investors. More submarine capacity does not automatically create stronger demand for local hosting or cloud adoption. Data centers need enterprise workloads, cloud traffic, government migration, content demand and reliable connectivity. Cloud providers need evidence of scale. Enterprises need price, reliability and regulatory confidence. Governments need procurement models that support local infrastructure rather than defaulting to foreign-hosted platforms.
In other words, cable resilience is connected to the entire digital economy.
The ITU report should therefore be read by African policymakers, regulators, infrastructure operators, investors, data center developers, cloud providers and enterprise leaders. It is not only a technical document. It is a warning that digital resilience must be designed intentionally.
For Africa, the priorities are clear.
Countries need faster and clearer rules for cable deployment and repair. Delays should be reduced through pre-approved emergency processes and coordinated agency responsibilities.
Governments and operators need shared risk frameworks. Cable routes, landing stations and fiber corridors should be mapped, monitored and protected as critical infrastructure.
Africa must invest in route diversity. This means multiple landing points, alternative terrestrial paths, cross-border corridors and stronger inland redundancy.
The continent needs deeper interconnection. Internet exchange points, carrier-neutral data centers, local peering and active ASN adoption should become mainstream infrastructure priorities.
Regional coordination is more essential than ever. Digital resilience cannot be achieved country by country if traffic, cables, cloud services and enterprise networks operate across borders.
Africa needs infrastructure designed around African demand. The continent should not only connect outward to global hubs. It must build the routes, exchanges, data centers and cloud markets that allow African traffic, businesses, platforms and public systems to connect to each other.
The ITU’s work gives Africa a timely opportunity to reframe the conversation. The old measure of progress was the number of submarine cables landing on the continent. Seven subsea cables does not matter anymore if a landslide can take most offline.
This matters because Africa’s digital future will be determined by whether its underlying infrastructure can carry traffic reliably, recover quickly from disruption, connect markets affordably and support local value creation. A fragile connectivity system limits everything built on top of it.
If Africa wants local cloud adoption, sovereign digital systems, regional digital trade, AI infrastructure, competitive data centers and stronger digital public services, it must treat connectivity resilience as foundational economic policy.
The opportunity is not simply to land more cables. It is to build an African connectivity architecture that serves African growth.
That means moving beyond cable landings and building the resilient digital corridors that connect Africa to itself.
