West Africa’s Digital Backbone: Phase3 and Sonatel Launch 3,500km Fibre Route

In a major leap for digital infrastructure across West Africa, Phase3  and Sonatel  have activated a new terrestrial fibre route stretching 3,500km from Lagos, Nigeria, to Dakar, Senegal, delivering scalable, low-latency connectivity and unlocking critical cloud and content capacity across the region.

This collaboration marks the next phase of Phase3’s East-West fibre expansion, extending its Lagos-Accra corridor to reach Dakar, one of West Africa’s key digital hubs. The result: a high-performance, land-based alternative to subsea systems, achieving latency as low as 32ms, and a much-needed layer of resilience for a region heavily impacted by the 2024 cable disruptions.

This isn’t just a route, it’s a digital spine for West Africa. We’re building for scale, for redundancy, and the future. Together, we’ve created a secure, high-capacity terrestrial path linking Dakar to Lagos while interconnecting our major platforms. It’s a step change in West Africa’s digital capability.

– Stanley Jegede, Executive Chairman, Phase 3

By bridging networks through Benin, Togo, Ghana, and now through to Senegal, the new terrestrial path provides critical redundancy for Hyperscalers, content networks, financial institutions, governments, and cloud providers. It also expands the Djoliba network from Ghana into Nigeria, while laying groundwork for Ikasira, Sonatel’s next-generation regional platform.

We’ve designed this network for hyperscalers, CDNs, and operators that can’t afford downtime. This is about data sovereignty, application performance, and cloud transformation. And most importantly, it’s about building an internet that doesn’t fail when the cables do.

– Craig Lowe, Chief Growth Officer, Phase 3

Sonatel played a central role in extending the fibre corridor westward. Its vision, combined with leadership, enables innovation and drives shared prosperity that unfolds opportunities in the region.

We are proud to partner with Phase3 to interconnect their West African backbone with our unique regional infrastructure. Our collaboration with Phase3 underscores our shared vision of fostering connectivity and innovation across Africa. This terrestrial fibre route is a significant achievement that will drive economic growth and digital inclusion in the region. We are excited to be part of this transformative project that will generate significant outcomes for our end users.

– Sékou Dramé, CEO, Sonatel

The route is engineered for financial services, enterprise cloud workloads, public sector digitization, and media streaming, ensuring cross-border interoperability and local access to cloud zones like AWS Wavelength, hosted by Sonatel in Dakar. It also helps reduce exposure to future subsea outages, supporting national digital strategies across the region.

Dakar is emerging as a strategic connectivity hub for West Africa. With this route, clients benefit from diversified infrastructure, lower latency, and reliable access to global content. This is the kind of investment that drives real economic outcomes.

– El Hadji Maty Sene, Managing Director, Sonatel Wholesale and International

The Phase 3-Sonatel route is a milestone in regional fibre collaboration, one that strengthens West Africa’s digital core and connects it more securely to the world. Commercial availability and service packages are expected to be announced soon.