Africa’s Digital Backbone: Between Promise and Fragility
When African governments talk about digital transformation, the headlines often focus on fintech, AI, or e-government portals. Yet beneath these ambitions lies a more basic truth: none of it works without robust, affordable, and resilient connectivity.
Wholesale players- Bayobab, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, MainOne/Equinix, WIOCC, Orange Wholesale, SEACOM, and CSquared , are laying down subsea cables, national backbones, and cross-border corridors. Their investments have already reshaped how Africans connect. But while progress is undeniable, the backbone still has structural weaknesses that could slow the very digital transformation it is meant to accelerate.
Ghana: Abundant subsea, uneven inland
Ghana has positioned itself as one of West Africa’s most connected economies. From the first SAT-3 cable to newer landings, Accra has long been plugged into global bandwidth. With Bayobab preparing to land the 2Africa cable and MainOne/Equinix operating a carrier-neutral data centre, the capital is becoming a regional hub.
Connectivity progress in Accra has been impressive, setting a strong foundation for Ghana’s digital economy. The next frontier is ensuring that the same affordability and speed extend to towns like Tamale and Bolgatanga. Expanding wholesale infrastructure beyond the capital will be critical to realising Ghana’s ambition of true national digital inclusion.”
Opportunity: Regulators could tie new subsea capacity to inland obligations — using capacity auctions or universal service subsidies to extend the benefits nationwide.
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Nigeria: Scale without resilience
Nigeria is Africa’s largest digital economy, and its connectivity reflects that ambition. Lagos hosts multiple subsea cables, with Bayobab, MainOne/Equinix, WIOCC, and Liquid all expanding their reach. Data centres are multiplying, and cloud adoption is accelerating.
But scale has not solved reliability. Fibre cuts are common, vandalism is frequent, and right-of-way disputes stall repairs. Outages ripple through fintech systems, media streaming, and even government platforms. In effect, Nigeria has a giant network built on fragile foundations.
Opportunity: A national fibre resilience charter, covering duct sharing, faster permitting, and joint protection investments, could stabilise the backbone and secure Nigeria’s position as West Africa’s true hub.
Côte d’Ivoire: Hub with weak spokes
Abidjan’s ambitions are clear: it wants to be the Francophone digital capital of West Africa. Bayobab is expected to bring 2Africa ashore, Orange Wholesale has deep roots, and other consortium players are active. The government markets the city as a rising data hub for cloud and fintech.
Yet, Côte d’Ivoire’s hub narrative risks becoming a story of “all centre, no spokes.” Connectivity into landlocked neighbours like Mali and Burkina Faso remains thin, expensive, and politically sensitive. If Abidjan becomes a fortress of bandwidth without affordable cross-border corridors, the region will continue to suffer from digital exclusion.
Opportunity: ECOWAS should treat fibre like highways, harmonising tariffs and rights-of-way so that hub benefits spill into the Sahel.
Kenya & East Africa: Corridors that stall at borders
Kenya has long been a connectivity pioneer, with Mombasa as a landing point for multiple subsea cables. The new Bayobab corridor linking Kampala–Malaba–Mombasa is a milestone, offering Uganda its shortest, highest-capacity path to the sea. Liquid’s Cape-to-Cairo vision and SEACOM’s subsea system deepen resilience.
But the region’s Achilles heel is the border. Every time fibre crosses into Uganda, Rwanda, or the DRC, costs and latency rise due to tariffs, permits, and regulatory mismatches. In practice, East Africa’s “digital corridors” are too often digital cul-de-sacs.
Opportunity: AfCFTA can champion digital trade corridors, with harmonised rules and service-level agreements that keep latency low and prices competitive across borders.
The bigger picture: what’s still missing
- Neutral IXPs and data centres: Without them, local traffic still detours internationally, raising costs.
- Price transparency
- Inclusion linkage: Wholesale projects are rarely tied directly to universal access outcomes.
A backbone worth governing well
In just a decade, the continent has moved from single-cable fragility to a multi-player ecosystem with global-class ambitions. Bayobab’s pan-African fibre push, Liquid’s cross-continental routes, MainOne/Equinix’s neutral DCs, WIOCC’s open-access model, each has moved the continent forward.
But resilience, inclusion, and transparency cannot be left as afterthoughts. The real task for policymakers and boards is to ensure that the next phase of Africa’s backbone is governed as well as it is built. That means codifying open access, embedding resilience, linking wholesale investments to universal access, and demanding price transparency.
The pipes are being laid. The question now is whether Africa’s digital backbone will be strong enough, fair enough, and resilient enough to carry the weight of the continent’s ambitions.
