At a Ministers Council held on Nov. 8, 2016, the government of Togo announced it was seeking funds to rehabilitate and built the Lomé-Cinkassé backbone. The request  for financing was submitted by the government at the sixth edition of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VI), organized by Japan’s Cooperation,          and held on August 27 and 28, 2016, in Nairobi, Kenya.

The government, through the rehabilitation and construction of fiber optic linking Lomé to Cinkassé, wishes to provide its population a better internet connexion, in the framework of a project to provide high quality data connectivity across the territory. According to the ministers who met in the presence of President Faure Gnassingbé last Tuesday, developing the Lomé-Cinkassé backbone will “lead to lower communication costs and significantly boost quality of service in Togo, quality of communication between the country and other nations in the sub-region and in the world”.  

The council of Nov.8 also revealed another financing request submitted by Togo at TICAD VI for the creation of a technopole including a data centre and an innovation centre; infrastructures which fall under the “State’s strategy to make Togo a digital hub in the sub-region”. 

Muriel Edjo