Google’s subsea cable for Africa is making its first landing in Togo

Equiano, Google’s subsea internet cable in Africa, will make its first landing in Togo this month.

First announced in 2019, Equiano is Google’s 14th investment in internet subsea cables but the first dedicated to internet access in Africa. It is expected to travel from Portugal to South Africa and is part of the company’s $1 billion Africa investment that includes a $50 million venture capital startup fund.

The landing in Togo may come as a surprise since an initial map of the project suggested it would branch out first in Lagos, Nigeria, arguably Africa’s technology hub. But Cina Lawson, Togo’s minister for digital economy and digital transformation, said her government successfully made the case to Google that it should be Togo instead. Raising west Africa’s internet capacity

Equiano lands in Togo thanks to a joint venture public-private partnership between Société d’Infrastructures Numériques (SIN), which is the country’s telecommunications asset company, and CSquared, a telecoms infrastructure company that started operating in Uganda in 2011.

CSquared Woezon, the JV formed, is a Togolese company and will manage the landing station, and manage fiber optics on high-voltage power lines that connect Togo to Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Benin, Lawson told Quartz in an interview. It will also extend internet services from the subsea cable to other parts of the country, acting as the country’s national broadband backbone.























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