CSquared, Phase3 and SBIN Commission Lagos-to-Accra Terrestrial Fibre Route, Strengthening West Africa’s Digital Resilience

CSquared and CSquared Woezon, through a strategic partnership with Phase3 and SBIN, today announces a new terrestrial fibre route from Lagos, Nigeria to Accra, Ghana, setting a new standard for regional connectivity.

Achieving latency of just 11ms between Lagos and Accra, this terrestrial route will ensure faster, more resilient data delivery for content, cloud, and communication services - a significant milestone in West Africa’s digital infrastructure resilience. 

This initiative responds directly to the vulnerabilities exposed in March 2024, when a rockfall off the West African coast damaged multiple subsea cables, causing widespread connectivity outages across the region, where to date no terrestrial solutions have been available to provide alternate restoration options in many parts of West Africa.

“We’re proud to partner to extend our existing high-capacity terrestrial infrastructure beyond Ghana and Togo” said Ian Paterson, CEO of CSquared. “This project proves what’s possible when regional infrastructure providers come together to build for scale, speed, and redundancy. It’s a significant step toward a digitally connected West Africa.

Our unique footprint in West Africa including our existing CSquared Woezon and CSquared Ghana operations are now integrated into a broader ECOWAS terrestrial solution to help drive digitalisation across the region.”

 

The new route forms the cornerstone of a broader East-West terrestrial strategy, offering reliable inland capacity for those 300 million people affected by the subsea failures. This route provides a resilient, high-performance alternative to subsea-only infrastructure enabling digital access for governments, enterprises, and citizens alike.

“This route reinforces our commitment to building a truly resilient and secure digital backbone across West Africa,” said Stanley Jegede, Executive Chairman of Phase3. “The events of March 2024 made it clear that Hyperscalers, CDNs, and operators alike require redundancy on land, not just undersea. With this new terrestrial link, Lagos’ digital ecosystem can be future-proofed, and ensure no nation east of Côte d’Ivoire is digitally isolated again.”

The successful configuration, activation and testing of this route was made possible by close collaboration with regional infrastructure partners Phase3 and SBIN, ensuring robust fibre deployment through Ghana, Togo, and Benin.  

“This collaboration between multiple partners offers strategic network resilience for the entire region,” added Craig Lowe, Chief Growth Officer at Phase3. “Subsea cables are vital, but diverse terrestrial paths are non-negotiable for today’s cloud-first, latency-sensitive ecosystem. This route will become the primary inland path from Nigeria to Accra, enabling redundant pathways for critical content delivery and cloud traffic.”

“SBIN is committed to enabling cross-border fibre networks that support growth across West Africa,” said Ormar Gueye Ndiaye, CEO of SBIN. “Our collaboration ensures Benin plays a key role in regional fibre resilience and helps position our national infrastructure as a gateway for high-speed, reliable data transmission.”

The partnership is a key step in achieving CSquared’s strategy of integrating the digital infrastructure of critical West African economies and leveraging its existing infrastructure, both terrestrial and through the Equiano cable system, with robust and resilient solutions.

The Ready for Service (RFS) date and commercials will be announced in due course; however, it is a key building block in extending fibre reach across ECOWAS. 

While this route reaffirms our collective role as pan-African digital infrastructure leaders, it sets a new benchmark for terrestrial connectivity in West Africa and underlines the importance of regional partnerships in achieving new levels of resilience.