- WATRA is seeking stronger regional coordination after simultaneous cable breaks disrupted Internet access in 13 West <a href="https://absafricatv.com/list-of-african-countries-that-can-visit-italy-without-visa-in-2026/” title=”List of African countries that can visit Italy without visa in 2026″>African countries in 2024
- Concentrated cable routes, single-cable dependence in some countries and repair costs of up to $8 million leave the region highly exposed
- WATRA wants harmonized protection rules, faster emergency procedures and greater route diversity, with satellites serving as backup rather than a replacement
The West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (WATRA) called on Monday, July 13, for stronger regional coordination to protect the region’s submarine cables.
The appeal followed the release of reports by the International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience, a joint initiative of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC).
WATRA’s call comes two years after the March 2024 crisis, which disrupted connectivity in 13 West African countries for several days. On March 14, 2024, four major cable systems, WACS, ACE, MainOne and SAT-3, were severed almost simultaneously off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire. Internet traffic fell by more than 50% at the height of the crisis. Banks were forced to close in Nigeria, fintech platforms went offline and cloud-dependent businesses suffered prolonged disruptions.
The scale of the disruption exposed a structural weakness in West Africa’s cable infrastructure. According to WATRA’s Infrastructure Working Group, 12 cable systems with 37 landing points provide the region with more than 613 terabits per second of capacity. The concentration of several routes in the same locations creates a major vulnerability: all four cables damaged in March 2024 converged off Côte d’Ivoire.
WATRA also said human activity, particularly fishing and anchoring, causes 85% of cable breaks, suggesting that stronger regulation and coordination could prevent many incidents.
WATRA Executive Secretary Aliyu Yusuf Aboki, who served on the International Advisory Body, said the March 2024 disruptions had demonstrated that submarine cable resilience was not merely a technical or telecommunications issue. Connectivity failures also affect businesses, financial transactions, public services, trade, employment and livelihoods across the region, he said.
The cost and complexity of cable repairs expose another regional vulnerability. A single repair costs between $1.5 million and $2 million, while operations involving multiple breaks can cost up to $8 million. Costs are driven partly by the distance specialized repair vessels must travel, as they are often stationed in Cape Town, South Africa.
Some countries, including Sierra Leone, Liberia and Mauritania, are connected by only one cable, leaving them at risk of a nationwide Internet outage if that connection fails.
Cable networks operate across borders, but their governance remains national. Authorization procedures, emergency protocols and cable protection rules vary among WATRA’s 16 member states. This fragmentation leaves West Africa’s $150 billion digital economy exposed, despite the region’s combined gross domestic product of more than $800 billion.
The March 2024 crisis heightened awareness of the region’s connectivity vulnerabilities. During the outage, satellite services, including Starlink and NigComSat in Nigeria, continued to provide connectivity, demonstrating the resilience of space-based networks when cable systems fail. The experience encouraged wider adoption of satellite services as backup connections across the continent.
Nigeria granted Amazon Kuiper a license in 2026 and, through NigComSat, entered into a multiyear partnership with Eutelsat OneWeb. Angola deployed Angosat-2, while telecommunications operators including Airtel, MTN and Orange entered into partnerships with satellite Internet providers. These initiatives reflect efforts to diversify connectivity infrastructure and reduce dependence on submarine cables.
Satellite services can complement submarine cables but cannot replace them. Their high cost limits widespread adoption: an ITU assessment found that a Starlink subscription represents between 22% and 37% of average monthly income in sub-Saharan Africa. Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has also warned that relying on foreign satellite providers for Africa’s connectivity resilience could create another form of dependence and raise sovereignty concerns.
The Advisory Body’s recommendations, released this week, call for simpler authorization and emergency repair procedures, harmonized cable protection regulations, stronger information-sharing on incidents and greater investment in route diversity and network redundancy.
Aboki said the measures required were regulatory interventions with economic consequences, rather than purely technical solutions.
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