At the AfricaCom international congress currently taking place in Cape Town, Orange is announcing the construction of a new international backbone network in West Africa. This infrastructure will be built around a terrestrial fibre optic network coupled with submarine cables and will benefit from centralized supervision. This multi-regional West African network will connect to the rest of the world through various submarine cables and will link up all the main capital cities in the region: Dakar, Bamako, Abidjan, Accra, Lagos…

The network will offer high levels of resilience and seamless availability thanks to diversified paths. As a result, a complete range of international connectivity services with accelerated delivery will be proposed. This includes IPL (International Private Line) services with bandwidth of 2 Mbps to 100 Gigabits and EPL (Ethernet Private Line) offers enabling natively secure point to point connections (L2 VPN) and available bandwidth from 2 Mbps to 10 Gigabits.

Orange is also offering international stakeholders access to its extensive solutions portfolio: hosting, OP transit, mobile data services (IPX), voice services, security, content delivery networks…

This new network is designed to provide large-scale international capacity and, in consequence, will help support the development of a digital ecosystem and meet business needs in West Africa. In addition to recent investments in the MainOne next-generation submarine cable connecting Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire to Europe, the West African backbone network represents a new stage in the development of Orange’s international connectivity in Africa.

Alioune Ndiaye, CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa, said: “For Orange, this West African backbone network represents a major investment that will secure availability of international connectivity and will enable us to meet the demand for increased bandwidth necessary for the continued digital development of regions within the zone.”

Jérôme Barré, CEO of Orange Wholesale and International Networks, said: “Through this project, Orange is clearly demonstrating its leadership and expertise in the design, deployment and operation of international network infrastructure. We are delighted to be able to offer our West African customers’ reliable, secure and high-quality international connectivity that connects them to the rest of the world.”

The commercial launch of the West African backbone is planned for the second quarter of 2020 and will consolidate Orange’s position as a regional leader.

Orange is present in 19 countries in Africa and the Middle East and has around 125 million customers as of 30 September 2019. With revenues of 5.2 billion euros in 2018, this area is a strategic priority for the Group. Orange Money, its mobile-based money transfer and financial services offer is available in 17 countries and has 45 million customers. Orange, a multi-service operator and benchmark partner of the digital transformation, provides its expertise to support the development of new digital services in Africa and the Middle East.