Phase3 and Sonatel have launched a new 3,500km terrestrial fibre route from Lagos, Nigeria, to Dakar, Senegal, significantly enhancing digital infrastructure in West Africa. This initiative delivers scalable, low-latency connectivity and boosts cloud and content capacity across the region. The collaboration marks the next phase of Phase3’s East-West fibre expansion, extending its Lagos-Accra corridor to Dakar, a key digital hub in West Africa. The new route provides a high-performance, land-based alternative to subsea systems, achieving latency as low as 32ms, and offers crucial resilience, especially after the cable disruptions of 2024.

Stanley Jegede, Executive Chairman of Phase 3, emphasized the route's importance as a "digital spine" for West Africa, highlighting its scale, redundancy, and future-proof design. The secure, high-capacity terrestrial path links Dakar to Lagos and interconnects major platforms, representing a significant advancement in West Africa’s digital capabilities. By connecting networks through Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Senegal, the route provides redundancy for hyperscalers, content networks, financial institutions, governments, and cloud providers. It also expands the Djoliba network from Ghana into Nigeria and sets the stage for Ikasira, Sonatel’s next-generation regional platform.

Craig Lowe, Chief Growth Officer at Phase 3, noted the network's design caters to hyperscalers, CDNs, and operators requiring uptime, focusing on data sovereignty, application performance, and cloud transformation. Sonatel played a crucial role in extending the fibre corridor westward, driving innovation and shared prosperity in the region.

Sékou Dramé, CEO of Sonatel, expressed pride in partnering with Phase3 to interconnect their West African backbone with Sonatel's regional infrastructure. He highlighted the shared vision of fostering connectivity and innovation across Africa, noting the route’s significance in driving economic growth and digital inclusion. 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 reduces exposure to future subsea outages and supports national digital strategies across the region.

El Hadji Maty Sene, Managing Director of Sonatel Wholesale and International, pointed out Dakar's emergence as a strategic connectivity hub, with clients benefiting from diversified infrastructure, lower latency, and reliable access to global content.

Phase3 Telecom, headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria, is a leading technology and digital infrastructure company delivering high-performance fibre, media, and fintech solutions across the ECOWAS region. With over 20 years of industry leadership, it has evolved into a multi-vertical platform for cloud, streaming, digital finance, and public-sector technologies, with a terrestrial fibre network spanning Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Niger, and Senegal.

Sonatel Group, part of the Orange Group, is a leading telecommunications service provider in West Africa, offering comprehensive solutions in fixed, mobile, internet, television, mobile money, and data services. Sonatel is committed to digital inclusion and economic growth through strategic partnerships and technology, holding a leading position on the Abidjan Regional Securities Exchange (BRVM) after 25 years.