en.Wedoany.com Reported - France's Orange Group, together with Canalink, GUILAB, International Mauritania Telecom, Orange Côte d'Ivoire, Sonatel, and Silverlinks—a total of seven companies—signed a Memorandum of Understanding on May 12, 2026, to launch the Via Africa submarine cable project. The memorandum confirms that the parties will jointly invest in the construction of a new submarine fiber optic cable system along the Atlantic coastline, connecting Europe and South Africa. According to the plan announced by the signatories, the system will operate under an "open cable" model and establish a consortium-based governance structure. Through joint investment, each participant will gain shared governance rights over the infrastructure, directly participating in key decisions regarding the cable's design, deployment, and operation.
The cable system's European landing points are confirmed to be located in the United Kingdom, France, and Portugal. Along the African Atlantic coastline, the system will sequentially pass through the Canary Islands, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, and Nigeria, before continuing southward to South Africa. The memorandum signatories have initiated two specific actions for the project's first phase: jointly funding a cable route feasibility study to determine the optimal path balancing technical feasibility, economic efficiency, and network resilience; and simultaneously launching the tender process for industrial suppliers to select a construction partner for the system. An Orange Group statement indicated that the project is open to the addition of new members, with other telecom operators or digital enterprises able to participate in joint investment at future stages.
Among the memorandum signatories, Canalink is a regional submarine cable operator in the Canary Islands, GUILAB is a Guinean telecommunications infrastructure company, International Mauritania Telecom is responsible for telecommunications services in Mauritania, Orange Côte d'Ivoire and Sonatel operate communication networks in Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal respectively, and Silverlinks is a submarine cable system integration and investment company. Orange Group has over 175 million customers across 18 countries in Africa and the Middle East, achieving revenue of 8.4 billion euros in the region in 2025.
The signing of the memorandum is directly related to the frequent submarine cable safety incidents off the coast of Africa in recent years. In 2024, a submarine rockfall occurred off the coast of Côte d'Ivoire in West Africa, simultaneously damaging four critical submarine cables—ACE, WACS, Main One, and SAT3—that carry international connectivity for Africa's west coast, causing severe internet service disruptions in multiple countries. Orange Group stated in its declaration that the Via Africa system will increase the redundancy of Africa's international connectivity by providing a new submarine route distinct from existing infrastructure.
World Bank research indicates that a 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration in developing countries can boost GDP growth by 1.38 percentage points. Via Africa is the third major transatlantic infrastructure project to emerge in the African submarine cable sector, following 2Africa and Equiano. Its distinctiveness lies in being initiated and governed by a consortium of telecom operators, rather than being led by a single hyperscale technology company.
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