To facilitate the delivery of an additional 90,000 kilometres of fiber optic cable for universal internet access throughout Nigeria, the Federal Government has approved a special-purpose vehicle.

An SPV is a distinct legal entity established for a particular purpose or undertaking. In this case, the SPV will oversee the execution, budget, and day-to-day operations of the fiber optics project.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Bosun Tijani, the Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, said that the project will maximize the utilization of eight underwater cables that have already touched down in Nigeria and boost the country’s internet access infrastructure.

According to him, the project is anticipated to boost Nigeria’s fibre optic cable capacity from 35,000 km to 125,000 km, placing it third in length among terrestrial fibre optic backbones in Africa, after Egypt and South Africa.

Tijani stated that for the past few months, the ministry had started laying the foundation for the SPV, which would be modelled after some of the best public-private partnership setups in Nigeria, like NIBSS and NLNG, in terms of administration and operations.

The minister explained, “This extensive coverage will enable us to optimise the unique benefit of having eight submarine cables already landed in Nigeria and, therefore, drive uptake of the data capacity that the cables offer beyond the current usage level of 10 per cent.

“Building on our existing work with the Broadband Alliance, this increased connectivity will help plug the current non-consumption gap by connecting over 200,000 educational, healthcare and social institutions across Nigeria, ensuring that a larger section of our society can be included in the benefits of internet connectivity.”

Approximately 71% of Nigerians do not regularly have access to mobile internet, according to a research released last week by the Groupe Special Mobile Association.

With the correct policies in place, Nigeria may gain 15 million Internet users by 2028. It was also stated that without universal access to digital connection, a more comprehensive digital transformation of the Nigerian economy would not be feasible.

The report stated, “While 29 per cent of Nigerians are regularly using mobile internet, there remains untapped potential; 71 per cent are not accessing these services regularly.

“An improved policy environment has the potential to help the industry boost coverage and adoption, resulting in 15 million additional internet users by 2028. However, the sector faces challenges to infrastructure deployment”.

Internet services across East and Southern Africa have suffered outages following undersea submarine cable cuts on Sunday.

According to the Group CTIO at Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Ben Roberts, in a post on X on Monday, the faults have been reported in the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) and the Seacom cables.

Though details of the fibre cut are still unclear, Roberts said three crucial submarine cables in the Red Sea, the Seacom, EIG, and AAE1, suffered cuts and remain unrepaired, leading to the widespread outage.

“We have experienced an outage on one of the undersea cables that deliver internet traffic in and out of the country,” Roberts said.

“We have since activated redundancy measures to minimise service interruption and keep you connected as we await the full restoration of the cable. You may, however, experience reduced internet speeds,” he added.

Four of the nine subsea cables that connect countries like South Africa to the rest of the world were reported as damaged due to incidents on either side of the continent.

In Kenya, this latest outage seems to have affected service providers like Safaricom, Airtel and Telkom Kenya. Safaricom said has since activated redundancy measures to minimise service interruption and keep users connected, according to reports.

Other East African countries affected by the cut are Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, and Rwanda.

This is the second time Africa has experienced a major fibre cut this year. In March, a suspected underwater rock slid off the coast of Cote d’Ivoire resulting in several submarine cables being offline which affected over 13 West African countries with greater impacts felt in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.

The affected cables included Africa Coast to Europe (ACE),
SAT-3 – Submarine Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable, WACS – West Africa Cable System and MainOne.