It is expected that Equiano, Google‘s subsea internet cable in Africa, will arrive in Togo this month for its first landing. This is Google’s 14th undersea cable investment, but the first specifically aimed at expanding internet access in Africa. The $1 billion investment in Africa, which includes a $50 million venture capital startup fund, is planned to transit from Portugal to South Africa.
This may come as a shock to many familiar with the project’s earlier plans, which indicated that the first stopover would be Lagos, Nigeria, Africa’s technology hub. That’s not the case with Cina Lawson, Togo’s minister of digital economy and digital transformation, who says her government successfully persuaded Google that it should be Togo.
CSquared, a telecommunications infrastructure company that began operating in Uganda in 2011, and Société d’Infrastructures Numériques (SIN), Togo’s telecommunications asset company and joint venture partner, helped bring Equiano to Togo.
According to Lawson, CSquared Woezon, a Togolese company, would oversee the landing station and high-voltage power cables connecting Togo to Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Benin. It will also serve as the country’s broadband backbone by extending internet services from the undersea cable to other regions of the country.
For Togo, the arrival of fibre optic cable is a significant event. Even though 72% of the population has a mobile phone and ranks 6th in Africa on the World Bank’s (now halted) ease of doing business list, just 30% of the population has access to mobile broadband. Most Togolese are still on 3G, which barely covers two-thirds of the country, while the rest of the globe is using 5G.
A 20-fold increase in bandwidth compared to other west African lines, according to Lawson, will satisfy a longing among Togo’s 19-year-old populace. “A fast internet connection is a must-have for anyone over the age of eighteen. Fibre optic networks are required if this goal is to be achieved.
Togo may be overshadowed by Nigeria, Ghana, and other west African neighbours, but it has shown potential in adopting digital technologies. The country established Novissi and distributed $34 million to 920,000 people via mobile money accounts when the pandemic began. UC Berkeley’s Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) scholars and a $10 million grant from GiveDirectly worked together on this initiative.
Up to 2025, Equiano is predicted to boost Togo’s GDP by $351 million. However, Lawson estimates Togo will need multiples of that sum, up to €300 million, to fully develop this potential. All of our power lines will be equipped with fibre optic cables, which we are currently discussing with lenders. It’s going to take some time, but we’ll get there.
Equiano cable system is the third private international cable owned by Google and the 14th subsea cable invested by Google. It connects Portugal and South Africa, running along the West Coast of Africa, with branching units along the way that can be used to extend connectivity to additional African countries. The first branch is expected to land in Nigeria.
Named for Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian-born writer and abolitionist who was enslaved as a boy, the Equiano cable is state-of-the-art infrastructure based on space-division multiplexing (SDM) technology, with 12 fibre pairs and a design capacity of 150Tbps, approximately 20 times more network capacity than the last cable built to serve this region. The SDM technology was first deployed in Google’s second private subsea cable, Dunant.
Equiano will be the first subsea cable to incorporate optical switching at the fibre-pair level, rather than the traditional approach of wavelength-level switching.
Update
Google launched the Equiano undersea cable in Togo on Friday 18th of March as expected. The event was attended by several dignitaries including President Faure Gnassingbé, Cina Lawson, Togo’s minister of digital economy and digital transformation. Google’s Director for West Africa, Juliet Ehimuan, was also at the event and she also tweeted about the event in Togo
The undersea cable will also land in Lagos (Nigeria), Swakopmund (Namibia), Cape Town (South Africa) and and St. Helena.
Expected to be ready for service later this year, Equiano will carry approximately 20 times more network capacity than the last cable built to serve this region
