The West African Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (WATRA) has warned that lack of cable resilience is putting the region’s $150billion digital economy at serious risk.
WATRA’s Executive Secretary, Aliyu Aboki, who disclosed this in a report made available to our reporter on Monday, added that the West African cable network “rests on a fragile foundation.”
“In March 2024, a series of submarine cable disruptions along the West African coast exposed a critical vulnerability at the heart of this emerging digital economy. For several hours–and in some cases days–connectivity was degraded across multiple countries. Banking systems slowed, digital platforms experienced outages, and businesses reliant on cloud infrastructure faced significant operational disruption.
“The incident was not unprecedented. According to the International Cable Protection Committee, most submarine cable faults globally result from fishing activity, anchoring, or natural seabed movement. What made the West African disruption different was its scale. Multiple cables serving the region were affected simultaneously, sharply reducing available bandwidth and overwhelming existing redundancy. The lesson was immediate: capacity is not resilience”, Aboki said.
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According to the WATRA scribe, West Africa is served by several major international systems, including West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), and MainOne Cable.
He said these systems collectively provide significant international capacity “yet their routing patterns and landing configurations meant that a single disruption could affect multiple systems at once”.
In the aftermath of the 2024 incident, he said internet traffic in affected countries fell sharply–by some estimates more than 50 percent–while latency increased and service quality deteriorated.
He said restoration timelines varied, but in some cases took several days, highlighting both physical repair constraints and administrative bottlenecks.
“For policymakers and investors, the implications are clear. Submarine cables are not simply telecommunications infrastructure. They are foundational to economic activity”, he wrote.
Daily Trust reports that the West African region, with a combined GDP of over $800bn, is undergoing rapid digital transformation. Its digital economy–spanning fintech, e-commerce, digital services, and connectivity–has been estimated to contribute between $100 billion and $150 billion in economic activity annually, with strong growth prospects.
Across the region, digital platforms are helping to overcome long-standing infrastructure constraints, boost productivity, attract investment, and create jobs.
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More than 95 percent of global internet traffic travels through submarine cables–a statistic consistently emphasised by the International Telecommunication Union.
In West Africa, where digital adoption is accelerating rapidly, the reliability of these systems is directly linked to economic performance. Outages translate into lost transactions, reduced productivity, and weakened investor confidence.
But Aboki said without resilient connectivity, West African digital economy momentum cannot be sustained.
Historically, he said resilience has been treated as a secondary consideration–something addressed after deployment rather than embedded at the point of investment, adding that they approach is no longer tenable.
He said: “Across global discussions, including those involving the World Bank, there is growing recognition that digital infrastructure must be approached through the lens of long-term risk and sustainability. Resilience shapes risk premiums, insurance costs, and financing decisions. Where it is poorly defined, it is treated as an additional cost. Where it is clearly linked to reduced downtime and operational continuity, it becomes a value proposition–one that can unlock capital. For underserved regions, this distinction is critical.”
He said the challenge is not simply to build more cables, but to build systems that are financeable, durable, and regionally coherent.
Addressing this, he said, requires a shift in perspective. Submarine cable resilience must be treated as a regional public good, supported by coordinated policy frameworks, he said