Google’s Equiano Sub-sea Cable Lands In Lagos

Last month, we reported on Google’s Equiano submarine cable having landed in Lomé, Togo.
This week, it landed in Lagos, Nigeria, the birthplace of writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano,
after whom the cable was named. This state-of-the-art fiber cable lands directly at the OACD
Lagos data centre and will then be extended to other data centres in Lagos. The landing partner
is WIOCC.

Equiano was announced in mid-2019 and is the third private international cable owned by
Google. It is part of Google’s US$1 billion package to build the digital industry on the continent
and “support the continent’s digital transformation”. Equiano will provide 20 times more cable
capacity to the region, which will allow for faster digital penetration and transformation to be
driven in the region.

It is estimated that internet prices will drop 16-21% by 2025. Equiano is
also “expected to boost Nigeria’s GDP by $10.1 billion,” according to Tech Cabal, and will
“increase internet speed by a factor of 6 and create 1.6 million jobs by 2025, according to a
recent impact assessment study by Africa Practice and Genesis Analytics”.

However, this also requires hyperscale connectivity to be extended from Lagos to the rest of
the country, and WIOCC will be involved in deploying a hyperscale national fibre network, in
partnership with Phase3Telecom and Western Telecommunications. The system will go live in
phases between June and December 2022. WIOCC has two data centre facilities in Africa’s two
biggest markets – Nigeria and South Africa – and intends to invest US$500 million over five
years.

Equiano is the latest addition to the African undersea cable network. It will eventually run
14530km from London to Portugal and then all the way down the western seaboard of the
African continent to South Africa, with another 11 country connections along the way.

It is scheduled for completion in 2022. Tech Cabal reports that, according to Google’s Director,
West Africa, Juliet Ehimuan, “Google is committed to supporting Africa’s digital transformation
and we are excited to see the impact of the landing of Equiano in Nigeria. We’ve worked with
established partners and in-country experts to guarantee that Equiano has the greatest
potential effect in Nigeria and throughout Africa.”