New Orange-backed subsea cable to connect Nigeria, 19 other countries

Global telecommunications operator Orange is backing a new 20,000-kilometre subsea cable project that will link Nigeria and nearly 20 other countries in Africa and Europe.

Developed by a consortium led by Orange, Via Africa will span more than 20,000 kilometres across the Atlantic, positioning it among the longest subsea cable systems serving the continent. Meta’s 2Africa remains the world’s longest submarine cable at 45,000 kilometres.

Nigeria, one of Africa’s largest internet and data markets, hosts eight submarine cables, the highest in West Africa. However, the country continues to face persistent fibre cuts, vandalism, and network congestion as internet usage and data traffic surge nationwide.

“Every two days somewhere in the world you have a cable cut or failure,” Michaël Trabbia, CEO of Orange Wholesale, told TechCabal in an interview on Thursday. “You need different routes to make sure that when you have one or two cable cuts, you still have connectivity.”

The project is still open to additional partners, with final landing points and participating countries expected to evolve as more operators join the consortium, Trabbia said.

While Africa has 77 active or planned subsea cable systems as of 2025, according to TeleGeography, the bulk of the continent’s international bandwidth remains concentrated in a handful of markets.

More than half of Africa’s international bandwidth flows through just five countries — Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, and Kenya showing how unevenly digital infrastructure is still distributed across the continent.

The new cable comes at a time when outages affecting existing submarine systems have exposed how vulnerable many African countries remain to single points of failure.

In recent years, multiple cable faults along the West African coast have simultaneously disrupted internet services across several countries, slowing banking platforms, fintech services, enterprise operations, and international connectivity.

Trabbia said the Via Africa project aims to reduce those risks by introducing new and more diverse routes rather than relying on existing pathways.

“The more the routes are different, the more you avoid single points of failure,” he said.

According to Trabbia, older subsea cables are becoming less efficient as newer systems can carry significantly more traffic with improved technologies.

“One cable lifetime is around 20 to 25 years,” he said. “Beyond 10 years old, cables become much more minor contributors to overall traffic because the new cables are much more efficient.”

Although Orange has not publicly disclosed the final capacity of the cable, Trabbia said the infrastructure is being designed to accommodate long-term growth in internet demand across Africa.

The system is expected to land in countries including Nigeria, Senegal, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mauritania, while additional landing points may be added as more consortium members join.

Unlike several existing cable systems that pass through Mediterranean routes, Via Africa will traverse the Atlantic corridor connecting West Africa directly to Europe. Orange said building multiple cable routes is central to the project’s plan to keep internet services running even if one cable is damaged or goes offline.

The cable is also expected to terminate in major data centres, potentially attracting large-scale data centres and cloud providers looking to expand digital infrastructure investments across Africa.

“We see hyperscalers investing more and more in Africa,” Trabbia said. “This cable may attract hyperscalers because it is one of the very big and important infrastructure projects to connect Africa.”

Construction timelines have not been finalised, but Orange estimates the project could take between three and four years to complete once consortium arrangements are fully concluded.

The company also said the cable will incorporate newer protection technologies designed to reduce damage from ship anchors and other marine activities that frequently affect subsea systems.

According to Trabbia, modern subsea cables are increasingly buried in areas up to 2,000 metres deep and reinforced with additional physical protection layers to minimise defects and outages.

Via Africa was first announced on May 12, 2026, during the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, attended by African heads of state, French President Emmanuel Macron, and business executives from Africa and Europe. At the summit, Orange announced a broader expansion of its digital ambitions on the continent, including plans to train more than three million young people in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and digital entrepreneurship by 2030.

The company also said it plans to expand its network of Orange Digital Centres from 50 to 100 across Africa and the Middle East while supporting more than 500 additional startups in sectors including healthcare, agriculture, fintech, education, and e-commerce.

The broader push reflects how telecom infrastructure is increasingly becoming central to Africa’s digital economy ambitions, especially as governments and businesses accelerate investments in AI, cloud computing, digital payments, and online services.

“We need this cable to achieve the digital ambition of the continent,” Trabbia said. “All of this will only be possible if we have the right infrastructure within Africa.”