Submarine cable activity in Africa appears to be far from slowing down. Plans were recently announced for two additional cables, one connecting France and Tunisia and the other involving the ECOWAS region.
French operator Orange has announced a plan to build a submarine cable that will connect the Tunisian city of Bicesse Grande to the French city of Marseille. The new 1,050-kilometer infrastructure will provide additional routes for multiple fiber pairs, each with a capacity of 20 terabits. It is scheduled to be operational by the end of 2025. The project will be co-funded by the European Commission. The news comes as no surprise. In 2013, Orange invested in a cable linking Tunisia and Europe through an investment-sharing agreement with Ooredoo.
Orange is not alone in developing such plans. In October 2022, Ooredoo Tunisia signed a partnership agreement with PCCW Global to access the PEACE submarine cable, scheduled to come online in 2024.
Meanwhile, the Amilcar Cabral submarine line, originally planned to connect only Guinea and Cape Verde, may be extended when The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone join the project and sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU).
The ECOWAS Commission will organize the implementation of the project through dialogue with beneficiary countries, donors and other interested parties. A Ministerial Steering Committee and a Committee of Experts have been established.
The Amilcar Cabral submarine cable development project began in October 2018, and it is unclear how the MoU will change its development, but a statement from Sierra Leone's minister indicates that the cable "will not only provide a backlink to our existing unique submarine cable, but it will also help increase broadband penetration in member states and promote regional integration through digital communications and e-commerce facilities, thereby making it easier to create a single digital market in the ECOWAS region."
