Orange Backs 20,000-Kilometer Cable to Link Africa and Europe

AFRICAN BUSINESS AND ECONOMYMay 26, 2026 at 10:51 AM UTC

TLDR

Orange's Via Africa project to deploy a 20,000-kilometer subsea cable connecting Nigeria and 20 other countries to meet rising data and cloud service demands.
Nigeria, with 8 existing submarine cables, faces connectivity challenges from fiber cuts, vandalism, and network congestion.
Via Africa aims to enhance connectivity reliability in Africa, diversifying routes and minimizing outages during cable failures.

Orange is backing a new 20,000-kilometer subsea cable that will connect Nigeria and almost 20 other countries across Africa and Europe, as demand for data and cloud services rises across the continent.

The project, called Via Africa, is being developed by a consortium led by Orange. It will run across the Atlantic corridor and is expected to land in countries including Nigeria, Senegal, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Mauritania. Final landing points may change as more operators join the group.

Nigeria already hosts 8 submarine cables, the most in West Africa, but still faces fiber cuts, vandalism and network congestion. Orange said the new cable is meant to add more routes and reduce the risk of outages when existing systems fail. “You need different routes to make sure that when you have one or two cable cuts, you still have connectivity,” said Michaël Trabbia, CEO of Orange Wholesale.

Africa has 77 active or planned subsea cable systems, but international bandwidth is still concentrated in a few markets. More than half of the continent’s international bandwidth flows through Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Algeria and Kenya. Recent cable faults along the West African coast have disrupted banking, fintech, enterprise and internet services across several countries.

Orange has not disclosed Via Africa’s final capacity. The company said the cable could take 3 to 4 years to complete after consortium plans are finalized. The project is part of a wider Orange push in Africa, including plans to train more than 3 million young people in digital skills by 2030 and expand Orange Digital Centres from 50 to 100 across Africa and the Middle East.

Key Takeaways

Via Africa shows how internet infrastructure has become part of Africa’s economic strategy. Data demand is rising because of mobile banking, fintech, e-commerce, cloud services, AI, streaming and public digital systems. But many African markets still depend on a small number of cable routes, landing points and data hubs. That creates risk when cables are damaged by anchors, seabed movement or other faults. A new Atlantic route can improve redundancy and reduce dependence on older systems that are less efficient after years of use. The project could also help attract data centers and cloud providers if it offers enough capacity, low latency and reliable links to Europe. For Nigeria and West Africa, the value is not only more bandwidth. It is resilience. Banks, telecoms, startups and public services need internet access that can survive cable cuts and route failures. The challenge will be coordination. Subsea cables require large capital, landing rights, local partners, data-center links and inland fiber. Via Africa will matter most if countries also improve last-mile networks, power supply, data regulation and local cloud infrastructure.

Business