In a recently concluded webinar organized by Ciena Corporation and TeleGeography titled ‘The African Submarine Networking Seascape: A new and emerging market’, MainOne CTO, Anil Verma showcased the significant growth that has occurred in broadband connectivity across West Africa over the last decade.

Africa leads the globe in international bandwidth growth. With the fastest growth rate over the last four years and eight new cables in the works over the next few years, this is an emerging market with key network infrastructure projects to watch.

From 2016 to 2020, Africa experienced the highest used international bandwidth growth by region, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 50%. However, Africa is still the world’s least connected continent, but it’s changing because of steady investments by African network operators.

Given submarine cables carry close to 99% of the world’s intercontinental electronic communications traffic, Africa requires access to this global submarine network infrastructure to fully benefit from an international digital economy. Many African countries recognize the importance of international connectivity to enable a viable and sustainable economy, which explains the growing number of submarine cable landing points providing access to the massive amounts of submerged bandwidth encircling Africa.

According to Anil, MainOne remains the only operator in West Africa to boast of service coverage in ten West African countries, connected to IXs in London, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Marseille, Frankfurt, Lagos, Accra, and Abidjan with access to IP transit in Lisbon, Madrid, and London. The combination of a submarine cable network, terrestrial metropolitan fiber infrastructure, data centre assets, and broad interconnect ecosystem makes MainOne a key enabler of digital transformation across West Africa.

He also reaffirmed MainOne’s commitment to become the regional interconnect hub for West Africa, enabling continued acceleration in digital access.

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To learn more about African submarine networks, you can listen to the recorded webinar by registering for the recent webinar given by Ciena, TeleGeography, and MainOne. You’ll hear about African submarine network trends and how an African network operator is addressing associated challenges and opportunities of enabling digital transformation across West Africa.