Telecom

WATRA Secretary sees Resilience as a Critical Link in West Africa’s Digital Economy

Published

2 months ago

April 19, 2026

Kindly share this post

Aliyu Aboki, Executive Secretary of WATRA has applauded the outcome of the International Submarine Cable Resilience Summit 2026 in Porto, Portugal, where infrastructure operators, regulators, financiers, and global institutions agreed that resilience is no longer a technical concern but an economic one. According to him, “for West Africa, this conversation is not theoretical.

It is immediate and consequential. The region, with a combined GDP of over $800 billion, is undergoing rapid digital transformation. Its digital economy—spanning fintech, e-commerce, digital services, and connectivity—has been estimated to contribute between $100 billion and $150 billion in economic activity annually, with strong growth prospects.

“Across the region, digital platforms are helping to overcome long-standing infrastructure constraints, boost productivity, attract investment, and create jobs. But this transformation rests on a fragile foundation. In March 2024, a series of submarine cable disruptions along the West African coast exposed a critical vulnerability at the heart of this emerging digital economy.

“For several hours—and in some cases days—connectivity was degraded across multiple countries. Banking systems slowed, digital platforms experienced outages, and businesses reliant on cloud infrastructure faced significant operational disruption. The incident was not unprecedented. According to the International Cable Protection Committee, most submarine cable faults globally result from fishing activity, anchoring, or natural seabed movement. What made the West African disruption different was its scale. Multiple cables serving the region were affected simultaneously, sharply reducing available bandwidth and overwhelming existing redundancy”.

Mr. Aboki, explained that West Africa is served by several major international systems, including West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), and MainOne Cable. These systems collectively provide significant international capacity. Yet their routing patterns and landing configurations meant that a single disruption could affect multiple systems at once. In the aftermath, internet traffic in affected countries fell sharply—by some estimates more than 50 percent—while latency increased and service quality deteriorated. Restoration timelines varied, but in some cases took several days, highlighting both physical repair constraints and administrative bottlenecks. For policymakers and investors, the implications are clear. Submarine cables are not simply telecommunications infrastructure. They are foundational to economic activity.

He noted that more than 95 percent of global internet traffic travels through submarine cables, a statistic consistently emphasized by the International Telecommunication Union. “In West Africa, where digital adoption is accelerating rapidly, the reliability of these systems is directly linked to economic performance. Outages translate into lost transactions, reduced productivity, and weakened investor confidence. At the Porto Summit, I reflected that this discussion is particularly important for West Africa, where the digital economy is emerging as a powerful driver of growth—helping to overcome physical infrastructure gaps while creating new pathways for inclusion and opportunity. But without resilient connectivity, that momentum cannot be sustained. Historically, resilience has been treated as a secondary consideration—something addressed after deployment rather than embedded at the point of investment. That approach is no longer tenable”.

“Across global discussions, including those involving the World Bank, there is growing recognition that digital infrastructure must be approached through the lens of long-term risk and sustainability. Resilience shapes risk premiums, insurance costs, and financing decisions. Where it is poorly defined, it is treated as an additional cost. Where it is clearly linked to reduced downtime and operational continuity, it becomes a value proposition—one that can unlock capital. For underserved regions, this distinction is critical.

“The challenge is not simply to build more cables, but to build systems that are financeable, durable, and regionally coherent. The 2024 disruptions also exposed a structural mismatch. Submarine cable networks are regional in operation, but governance remains largely national. Permitting processes differ.

Emergency response procedures are not harmonised. Cable protection regimes vary in enforcement. This fragmentation introduces risk. When outages occur, delays in customs clearance, port access, and inter-agency coordination can extend repair timelines. For investors, these uncertainties translate directly into higher cost of capital.

Addressing this requires a shift in perspective. Submarine cable resilience must be treated as a regional public good, supported by coordinated policy frameworks. In West Africa, this has reinforced the importance of regulatory alignment through WATRA, which brings together telecommunications regulators from 16 member states. The focus is not centralisation, but coordination—ensuring that critical aspects of resilience are addressed consistently across jurisdictions.

This includes:

Streamlined and predictable landing and permitting processes
Stronger cable protection frameworks aligned with international best practice
Pre-agreed emergency protocols for repair operations
Improved data sharing on outages and restoration timelines

These are not technical fixes. They are regulatory interventions with economic consequences.

Equally important is the need to embed resilience at the design stage of new investments. This means prioritising true route diversity, avoiding correlated risk, and aligning regulatory approvals with resilience objectives. West Africa’s experience is not unique. Similar vulnerabilities exist across emerging markets and small states.

What is changing is the recognition that resilience is central to the economics of connectivity. For West Africa, the stakes are particularly high. The region’s digital economy is expanding rapidly, driven by fintech, mobile broadband, and digital entrepreneurship. These sectors depend on infrastructure that remains largely invisible—until it fails.

Submarine cable repairs in the region are inherently costly. A single repair is typically estimated at around $1.5–2 million, with vessel mobilisation from distant bases such as Cape Town accounting for a significant share of the expense. In more complex cases—particularly where multiple cables are affected—costs can rise to as much as $8 million. Limited availability of specialised repair vessels in Africa further compounds the challenge, contributing to longer restoration timelines compared to global benchmarks.

The 2024 disruptions were a stress test. They exposed weaknesses, but also created momentum for reform. If resilience is embedded into policy, design, and financing frameworks, West Africa can build a more robust foundation for digital growth.

What is often overlooked is that resilience is not only about infrastructure—it is about livelihoods. It is what allows a 24-year-old graduate running a furniture business on Instagram in Lagos to continue fulfilling orders without interruption. It is what enables a small-scale grocery distributor in Surulere, relying on digital payments, to keep transactions flowing even when networks are under strain.

At a larger scale, banks processing millions of daily transactions, logistics companies coordinating cross-border supply chains, and telecom operators delivering data services all depend on uninterrupted connectivity. When resilience fails, the cost of downtime is immediate—lost revenue, disrupted trade, and weakened confidence. Resilience, in other words, connects the informal trader, the small business owner, and the multinational enterprise in the same economic chain.

What distinguishes the West African context is that, for many participants in this economy, disruptions translate directly into lost income with limited buffers. Unlike more mature markets, where redundancies and institutional safeguards can cushion short-term shocks, much of the region’s digital economy operates in real time, with little margin for interruption. Resilience therefore does not simply protect submarine cables—it underpins economic continuity.

Kindly share this post

Telecom

Aba to Host MTN’s “The Gathering” with Pitchathon Offering ₦5 Million Prize Pool for Emerging Startup Founders

Published

20 hours ago

June 4, 2026

Ugo Onwuaso

Kindly share this post

MTN’s Youth cultural and lifestyle event “The Gathering” will hold in Aba at the Prime Event Centre from June 14 to 15, 2026, with a high-stakes Pitchathon designed to spotlight and reward the most promising early-stage founders in the city, offering a total prize pool of ₦5 million.

Aba to Host MTN’s “The Gathering” with Pitchathon Offering ₦5 Million Prize Pool for Emerging Startup Founders

The competition will award ₦2.5 million to the winning startup, ₦1.5 million to the first runner-up, and ₦1 million to third place, giving young entrepreneurs not just funding, but a direct platform to validate their ideas in front of investors, consumers, and industry stakeholders.

The Aba Pitchathon follows a highly successful Lagos edition of The Gathering on 100, which took place at the National Stadium, Surulere, from April 22 to 26, where eight startups collectively received ₦45 million in seed funding after pitching solutions across fintech, healthtech, agritech, edtech, and creative technology.

At the Lagos edition, Hurpham Africa emerged as the overall winner with ₦15 million in funding support, followed by Coconoto Ltd with ₦10 million and Rava Send with ₦5 million. Five other startups – URI Social, Dulces Jams, Kindly Book, Africa Medical Marketplace, and MyFund – each received ₦3 million, alongside visibility and MTN business ecosystem support.

Organisers say the goal is to deepen access to opportunity across Nigeria by taking The Gathering on 100 beyond Lagos into high-potential commercial hubs like Aba, where entrepreneurship continues to thrive.

Registration is now open via The Gathering’s official website. Entrepreneurs, builders, and early-stage founders in Aba and surrounding cities are encouraged to apply for a chance to pitch live at the event.

Kindly share this post

Telecom

Meta Unveils AI-Powered Business Agent to Support Customer Engagement

Published

20 hours ago

June 4, 2026

Ugo Onwuaso

Kindly share this post

Meta has unveiled a new artificial intelligence-powered tool, Meta Business Agent, designed to help businesses automate customer interactions, boost sales and improve operational efficiency across its messaging platforms.

Telecom

Digital Encode Calls for Immediate Action as Cyber Threats Escalate Nationwide

Published

20 hours ago

June 4, 2026

Ugo Onwuaso

Kindly share this post

Digital Encode Limited, a leading information security and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) advisory firm, has issued an urgent cybersecurity advisory following a surge in security breaches affecting financial institutions, government agencies, fintechs, and other organizations across Nigeria.

Digital Encode

Cyber threat actors have recently exposed data purportedly from both private and public institutions in Nigeria, underscoring the growing need for stronger cybersecurity frameworks, proactive threat monitoring, and coordinated incident response measures.

But Digital Encode’s advisory highlights a troubling pattern: most recent cyber incidents are not driven by sophisticated zero-day exploits, but by preventable weaknesses in basic security configurations, credential management, and operational controls.

According to the advisory signed by Professor Obadare Adewale Peter, Chief Visionary Officer of Digital Encode Limited, attackers are increasingly exploiting misconfigured systems and publicly exposed assets, such as unsecured databases, open cloud storage buckets, leaked API keys, and critical servers exposed to the internet, many of which are easily discoverable through open repositories, cloud indexing tools, and even dark web marketplaces.

The advisory outlines critical areas of concern, including publicly accessible cloud storage exposing sensitive customer and operational data; hardcoded secrets in web and mobile applications, including API keys and tokens; leaked credentials in repositories and deployment artifacts; weak internal access controls and over-reliance on single authentication layers; exposure of administrative endpoints, API documentation, and development environments in production; uncontrolled use of Third-Party Hosting platforms such as Vercel, Netlify, and Render; poor token lifecycle management and weak authentication, inadequate vendor risk management and monitoring controls

Digital Encode noted that these vulnerabilities are widespread across organizations, particularly in financial institutions, payment service providers, Fintech companies and public sector platforms, where similar exposure patterns continue to recur.

Not a Technology Problem, But an Execution Gap

“Organizations affected in recent breaches were not compromised due to highly advanced attacks, but due to lapses in enforcing existing security controls, like, ensuring that no cloud resources linked to organizations whether AWS S3, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, or Firebase allow anonymous access, Verify that no cloud credentials or API tokens are exposed in public or private repositories, container registries or deployed applications, and all external and internal APIs must enforce authentication and authorization controls at all times” Prof. Obadare stated.

The advisory stresses that most of these risks can be mitigated with readily available tools and best practices, underscoring a critical gap between security policy and implementation.

Urgent Actions Recommended

Digital Encode has called on organizations to act immediately by conducting a comprehensive audit of all internet-facing assets, including third-party systems; revoking and rotating all exposed or potentially compromised credentials including passwords, API keys, and access tokens; reviewing historical logs to assess the extent of any prior exploitation; engaging vendors to address third-party security exposures; fixing identified misconfigurations and validating remediation efforts; strengthening monitoring, logging, and threat detection systems; and documenting remediation steps and residual risks for governance and compliance.

The firm also emphasized the need for improved visibility into shadow IT and unauthorized deployments tied to employees’ accounts, which increasingly serve as entry points for attackers.

Call for Proactive Security Posture

Digital Encode reiterated its commitment to supporting organizations through enterprise-wide security assessments and independent validation of implemented controls.

“We strongly advise that this advisory be actioned without delay,” Prof Obadare warned, adding that proactive security hygiene, not reactive response, will determine resilience in Nigeria’s evolving threat landscape.

Kindly share this post