Can Morocco position itself as an African “node”? [INTÉGRAL]

On March 14, an Internet outage of unprecedented proportions hit West and Central Africa. After the simultaneous rupture of four undersea cables, more than ten countries were cut off, affecting several hundred thousand Internet users. In Côte d’Ivoire, the country most affected by the outage, only 3% of users had internet access during the night from Thursday to Friday.

In fact, the country’s two largest operators, Orange and MTN, were hit hard by the incident. A third operator, Moov (a subsidiary of Maroc Telecom), managed to avoid the outage thanks to the use of a separate cable, “Maroc Telecom West Africa”. During this episode, MoovAfrica was even able to offer its users additional capacity thanks to this infrastructure.

If the causes of this incident are not yet known, the most likely hypothesis would be seismic activity on the coast of Ivory Coast. The four affected cables (The West AfricaCable System, MainOne, South Atlantic 3 and ACE) actually pass through the same tight area and share the same exit point: Abidjan.

That an incident of this severity should occur in Africa is no coincidence: it is the continent with the least supply of submarine cables in the world. Today, 99% of the world’s digital data passes through these cables. The nerve center of this huge spider’s web is obviously the United States, and increasingly China and Europe. With the increasing number of Internet users in Africa, the lack of infrastructure will be a major challenge in the years to come.

In this part of the continent affected by the outage, there is a disparity in access to the global grid. Coastal countries like Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria are fairly well supplied with cables, while Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Liberia do not have this chance. For what?

“These are mainly economic or security reasons. When the companies pulled the cables and established access points on the coast, countries like Sierra Leone or Guinea-Bissau were at war. Sometimes the population is very small, so the local operator is not willing to pay for this type of installation,” explains Charlotte Escorne, connectivity specialist in West Africa.

Until recently, submarine cables along the west coast of Africa (ACE, SAT-3/WASC, etc.) directly connected these countries to southern Europe, without passing through Morocco. In order to supply its subsidiaries in the region (MoovAfrica), Maroc Telecom launched a new cable in July 2021, “Maroc Telecom West Africa”.

With a length of 8,600 km, it connects the Kingdom with five coastal countries, then with three landlocked countries (Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger) via the trans-African land cable that crosses Ivory Coast and Togo. In the second phase, the operator laid a cable from Casablanca to Lisbon, the entry point to the European optical loop. This experience shows that Morocco’s geographical position makes it a potential continental node, that is, a strategic place where several cables cross.

On its Mediterranean coast, a sea covered with submarine cables, the country has two entry points (Nador and Tetouan). As for the North Atlantic Ocean, a few kilometers from the Europe/United States transatlantic cable network, Morocco has three entry points in Casablanca, Asilah and Dakhla.

At the initiative of the Orange company, Morocco will be connected to the Medusa system by 2026, the longest submarine cable in the Mediterranean that connects the countries of North Africa and Southern Europe. Although the Kingdom can benefit from the West Africa-Atlantic-Mediterranean link, it lacks the know-how, financial resources and security guarantees to assert itself in this area.

Submarine cable jobs require specialized skills that few companies master. In the field of cable production, installation and maintenance, for example, Alcatel Submarine Networks and Orange Marine are market leaders. Moreover, the investment in this type of infrastructure is very high, which is why most cables belong either to operator consortia or to GAFAM.

It cost Maroc Télécom no less than 150 million euros. In addition, submarine cables require regular monitoring and maintenance, as they are subject to severe corrosion that accelerates their degradation. Moreover, the novelty of the “Maroc Telecom West Africa” cable could explain its earthquake resistance, unlike the other four.

They can also suffer unintentional damage (illegal fishing, sea currents, seismic activity) or even be victims of sabotage. Finally, submarine cables are particularly exposed to espionage activities. The Snowden affair revealed that the US National Intelligence Service (NSA) had the ability to extract data directly from the cables.

“As with any other critical infrastructure, submarine cables require the mobilization of surveillance resources such as satellites, radars, drones or patrols by the gendarmerie and the Royal Navy,” recommends Abdelouahed Jraifi, a telecommunications expert.

In the West African region, the development of communication networks and the arrival of 5G technology will require, in the years to come, an increase in the capacity of existing submarine cables, or even the installation of new cables. This development is necessary to meet the growing demand for bandwidth and connectivity.

Operators in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Nigeria already offer 5G subscriptions, which is not yet the case in Morocco. For these markets, this technology is the prerogative of Chinese equipment manufacturers (Huawei and ZTE), who apply an aggressive commercial strategy there.

“Huawei not only sells its equipment to private operators and companies, but also signs partnerships with countries. In Senegal, for example, Huawei sold the entire package to the state under the name Smart Senegal. This includes an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Senegal to Cape Verde, an entire terrestrial fiber optic network, a data center and security services (Safe City), such as facial recognition cameras,” we learn. Charlotte Escorne.

How can Morocco fit into this landscape that is as promising as it is extremely competitive? One way could be to include a telecom component in the Kingdom’s new Atlantic strategy, either through technical cooperation with West African countries, or by jointly ensuring the security of these submarine cables.