Briefing journalists, yesterday, on the Submarine Cable Resilience Summit, which begins today in Abuja, the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, said the Federal Government is investing $2 billion in 90,000 kilometres of submarine cable network across the country to ensure that Nigerians, irrespective of their locations, would have access to millions of connectivity.
About 150 to 200 cable cuts occur globally every year and the cuts usually disrupt connectivity across all sectors of the global economy, including banking and telecommunications.
To this end, 150 experts including members of the International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience set up by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to strengthen the resilience of this vital telecommunication infrastructure have converged on Abuja to build consensus on how to protect the submarine cables, improve resilience.
The advisory body, which has 40 members, is co-chaired by Tijani; and the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Communications Authority of the Republic of Portugal (ANACOM), Prof Sandra Maximiano.
Tijani noted that about 90 per cent of internet traffic in the country was based on sub-sea cables, adding that the challenge was that as Nigeria continued to drive and push for a stronger digital economy, it must ensure the resilience of that infrastructure that is the real backbone for the digital economy.
In his comment, the Deputy Secretary General of ITU, Tomas Lamanauskas, observed that the digital world depended on submarine cables because they carried the bulk of the traffic and ensured that the traffic across the continents was carried around to ensure that continents are connected digitally.
He said: “Everything in the digital world is dependent on submarine cables and that means when disruptions happen, we really feel them, this is partly what inspired these discussions, the cuts that happened in West Africa in March last year affected 13 countries in West Africa, because the four submarine cables were cut off the coast here because of the natural causes of the underwater earthquakes.”
Just last year, we also had important cable cuts in the Red Sea that basically cut 25 per cent of traffic between Asia and Europe. We had important cuts in the East Africa coast with a number of countries affected.”
