• The talks reportedly aim to boost digital resilience after West Africa’s recent connectivity disruptions.
• The project would focus on route diversity, complementing Equiano and 2Africa rather than simply adding bandwidth capacity.
• Abuja is pursuing a multi-vendor strategy to strengthen infrastructure resilience while preserving competition and digital sovereignty.

The Nigerian government is in active discussions with Alphabet Inc.’s Google about deploying a new undersea fibre-optic cable, as Africa’s largest economy seeks to strengthen the resilience of its digital infrastructure following recent regional disruptions. The talks, confirmed by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to Bloomberg, mark a shift in national strategy: the priority is no longer just expanding bandwidth capacity, but aggressively reducing exposure to systemic connectivity risks.

The announced discussions follow damage to multiple subsea cables in March 2024. This incident disrupted banking, telecommunications, and internet services across West Africa, exposing the fragility of the region’s digital arteries. Nigerian authorities are now seeking to improve route diversity by exploring additional maritime corridors distinct from existing Atlantic pathways, according to people familiar with the matter.

However, this push for diversity faces a stark geographic reality. Industry experts note that Nigeria’s position on the West African coastline leaves few options for truly "distinct" paths. Most cables are forced to hug the continental shelf to reach Europe. To achieve genuine redundancy, a new system would likely require complex deep-sea engineering to bypass traditional seabed choke points or a completely novel route architecture—such as a direct link across the South Atlantic to Latin America—to avoid the congested corridors that caused the 2024 blackout.

From Capacity to Redundancy

Nigeria’s subsea cable ecosystem has historically relied on systems developed by traditional telecom operators, including MainOne—now owned by Equinix—and Glo-1, operated by Globacom. These assets underpinned the country’s broadband expansion over the past decade but were designed primarily for volume rather than structural redundancy.

The entry of hyperscalers has since reshaped the market. Google’s Equiano cable, which landed in Lagos in 2022, introduced space-division multiplexing, significantly increasing available bandwidth. In parallel, the Meta-backed 2Africa consortium is deploying what is expected to be the world’s longest subsea cable, encircling the African continent.

Despite these massive investments, a critical vulnerability remains: many newer systems still rely on overlapping coastal landing zones and seabed routes. The discussions with Google are therefore focused on "route diversification" that complements existing systems rather than replicating them, aiming to address the problem of correlated failures, in which a single underwater landslide can sever multiple cables.

Closing the "Last Mile" Gap: The $2 Billion Solution

While the subsea strategy addresses the coastline, the "Lagos bottleneck" has long been the primary choke point for national connectivity. For years, terabits of capacity have landed on the shores of Lagos, only to be stranded by a fragile terrestrial fibre network incapable of distributing that data to the hinterlands.

Historically, this inland infrastructure has been plagued by vandalism, accidental cuts during road construction, and complex Right-of-Way (RoW) disputes between state and federal governments. However, the Nigerian government is moving to close this gap before the next wave of subsea cables arrives.

Abuja is currently advancing a $2 billion fibre-optic investment aimed at laying 90,000 kilometers of terrestrial cable, with backing from the African Development Bank (AfDB). This project serves as the critical terrestrial counterpart to the subsea negotiations. By creating a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to manage this massive backhaul expansion, the government aims to ensure that when Google’s new cable lands, the capacity can actually reach Kano, Abuja, and other economic hubs, rather than remaining trapped at the beach.

Google’s African Infrastructure Strategy

For Google, the potential project aligns with its broader strategy in Africa, where it pledged $1 billion in digital investments in 2021. The company has shifted from being a wholesale customer of telecom infrastructure to an owner-operator, a move aimed at lowering latency and improving reliability for its cloud and AI services.

People familiar with the talks say the discussions reflect an approach similar to the model used for Equiano’s landing in Togo, where Google partnered with the government to ensure open-access connectivity. Replicating this in Nigeria would allow the infrastructure to serve both hyperscalers and local operators, avoiding a closed proprietary system.

The potential macroeconomic implications are significant. Abuja has positioned the digital economy as a key growth pillar, and officials have said Nigeria’s ambition to develop artificial intelligence at scale will depend on reliable, always-on international connectivity.  While no final investment decision has been announced, the talks underscore a maturing digital policy. Nigeria is moving beyond the simple goal of "more internet" to a complex, multi-layered strategy focused on resilience, redundancy, and the strategic control of its critical infrastructure—both at sea and on land.

Idriss Linge