Five West African States Move Toward Second Submarine Cables to Reduce Internet-Outage Risk

Five West African countries are moving towards additional submarine-cable capacity as the region seeks to reduce the economic risk created by dependence on limited international internet links.

Delegations from The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone have participated in an ECOWAS-led evaluation of proposals under the World Bank-supported West Africa Regional Digital Integration Program. The process is intended to support a second submarine-cable connection for the participating countries and strengthen the resilience of regional connectivity.

The initiative matters because a single cable fault can disrupt banking, mobile money, government platforms, cloud services and business operations across an entire country. Additional capacity and better redundancy can limit the scale and duration of such outages.

Why redundancy matters

Submarine cables carry most international internet traffic. Countries connected through only one principal route remain vulnerable to physical damage, technical failure and congestion.

For small coastal economies, an outage can quickly become a national economic event. Banks may struggle to process transactions, businesses can lose access to cloud systems, and public services can become difficult to reach.

A second connection can provide an alternative route, but resilience depends on more than the number of cables. Landing stations, terrestrial fibre, internet exchange points and wholesale-access rules must also be designed to prevent new single points of failure.

A regional digital-integration project

The cable initiative forms part of WARDIP, a wider programme intended to improve digital infrastructure, expand regional markets and support digital businesses.

The World Bank’s second WARDIP operation includes financing for Benin, Liberia and Sierra Leone and is expected to expand broadband access, support digital-service adoption and strengthen the environment for technology businesses.

For the five countries involved in the current cable-capacity process, the policy challenge will be ensuring that additional international capacity translates into better service and more affordable prices for consumers and businesses.

What must be clarified

The procurement process is still at the evaluation stage. Contracts have not been publicly confirmed, and the final design may include new physical infrastructure, purchased capacity or a combination of approaches.

Governments and ECOWAS will also need to clarify open-access obligations, wholesale pricing, ownership structures and maintenance responsibilities. Without competitive access, new infrastructure may improve resilience without delivering lower prices.

Digital resilience as economic infrastructure

Reliable connectivity is increasingly as important to economic activity as roads, ports and electricity. Digital finance, customs systems, public administration and regional trade all depend on secure networks.

For West Africa, the second-cable programme is therefore not only a telecommunications project. It is part of a broader effort to build the infrastructure required for regional commerce, digital sovereignty and more resilient public services.

References

• ECOWAS: Evaluation of submarine-cable capacity proposals under WARDIP
• World Bank: $137 million WARDIP operation for Benin, Liberia and Sierra Leone