Orange Backs New Subsea Cable Project Linking Europe and West Africa

Orange has signed a memorandum of understanding with a group of telecom and digital infrastructure players to move forward with the Via Africa subsea cable project.

The agreement, signed on Tuesday, May 12, brings together a consortium that includes Canalink, GUILAB, International Mauritania Telecom, Orange Côte d’Ivoire, Sonatel and Silverlinks. The partners will co-invest in the project, sharing both funding and decision-making as development progresses.

Route, Design and Next Steps

The Via Africa cable is expected to run along the Atlantic corridor, linking Europe to West Africa. Planned landing points in Europe include the United Kingdom, France and Portugal, with connections to Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. There are also plans to extend the route further south, potentially reaching South Africa.

The system is being designed as an “open cable,” which means capacity can be scaled over time as demand grows while creating more routing options. In the near term, the consortium will carry out a feasibility study to determine the most suitable route, taking into account technical, cost and resilience factors. The next step will involve selecting an industrial partner to build the infrastructure.

The project moves forward as demand for internet capacity across Africa continues to grow, while much of the continent still depends on a limited number of subsea cables. Recent disruptions have highlighted how vulnerable connectivity can be when those routes are affected. Other major projects have already been deployed to address this gap, including the 2Africa cable backed by Meta and global operators, as well as Google’s Equiano cable linking Europe with parts of West Africa.