More than 95 percent of Nigeria’s international internet and communications traffic depends on submarine cables that are increasingly vulnerable to damage caused by human activity, raising concerns about the resilience of the country’s digital economy as data demand surges.
According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), over 80 percent of faults affecting the global submarine cable system are caused by fishing activities and ship anchoring, rather than natural disasters. The remaining faults are linked to earthquakes, storms, strong undersea currents and equipment failure.
Read also: Amazon can beam satellites over Nigeria, but can’t sell internet yet. Here’s why
The warning comes as Nigeria deepens its reliance on undersea infrastructure to support broadband access, cloud services, fintech platforms and emerging artificial intelligence applications. Submarine cables carry more than 99 percent of global international data traffic, making them a critical, yet often overlooked, component of national economic security.
Nigeria currently hosts landing points for eight major submarine telecommunications cables, most of them concentrated in Lagos, with newer landings spreading to other coastal states. The cables include MainOne, SAT-3/WASC operated by Natcom (ntel), GLO-1 and GLO-2 owned by Globacom, Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), West Africa Cable System (WACS), Google’s Equiano cable and 2Africa, the world’s largest submarine cable system led by a Meta-backed consortium.
Collectively, these cables form the backbone of Nigeria’s international connectivity, supporting everything from mobile data services and enterprise networks to financial transactions and government digital platforms. Any prolonged disruption could slow connectivity nationwide and ripple across sectors reliant on stable internet access.
One key challenge is regulation. According to the ITU, permitting requirements and regulatory bottlenecks often delay the deployment of repair vessels, which are already limited in number globally. These delays can leave affected countries exposed to prolonged service disruptions.
Recent incidents have underscored the stakes. In 2024, the Pacific island nation of Tonga experienced a week-long internet blackout after a cable break, the third major disruption in five years, highlighting how a single point of failure can isolate an entire country digitally.
The risks are not limited to remote regions. The Red Sea, a major transit route for submarine cables linking Europe, Asia and Africa, remains a high-risk zone due to access constraints and security challenges, forcing operators to reroute traffic and increasing pressure on alternative paths.
Against this backdrop, Nigeria has emerged as a key voice in global efforts to strengthen submarine cable resilience. In 2024, the International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience was established, co-led by Nigeria and Portugal, bringing together 42 members from governments, operators and the cable industry.
The advisory body focuses on practical measures to protect cables, reduce deployment and repair times, enhance redundancy and share best practices. Its work featured prominently at the International Submarine Cable Resilience Summit held in Porto, Portugal, from February 1 to 2, following the inaugural summit in Abuja in early 2025.
Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, who co-chaired the meeting, said submarine cables have become strategic infrastructure as more of the global economy moves online.
“Submarine cables, which carry over 99 percent of global internet data, are now strategic infrastructure, and our collective responsibility is to ensure this infrastructure is resilient, secure and future-facing,” Tijani said in a post following the summit.
Read also: NCC approves six new internet providers as competition deepens across Nigeria broadband market
Doreen Bogdan-Martin, ITU secretary-general has also stressed the need to treat submarine cables as Critical National Information Infrastructure, calling for stronger protection frameworks as global data demand accelerates.
Over the past decade, the total length of submarine cables worldwide has increased by more than 70 percent, driven by the growth of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data-intensive digital services. While this expansion has improved connectivity, experts warn that resilience has not always kept pace.
For Nigeria, where digital services play a growing role in economic diversification, the challenge is clear: protecting undersea cables from avoidable human damage and ensuring rapid repairs when faults occur is becoming as important as building new digital capacity.
