Stakeholders urge increased partnership to protect int’l submarine cables

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By Jessica Dogo

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and maritime stakeholders on Friday urged all stakeholders to cooperate in promoting cable resilience and protecting international submarine cable ecosystem.

The stakeholders said this during interviews with newsmen at the just-concluded International Submarine Cable Resilience Summit held in Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that globally about 200 undersea cables were cut or disrupted as of 2024 with the most frequent damage being caused by fishing equipment and ship anchors.

Under Nigeria’s sea, some of the notable cables are the Google Equiano, the West African Cable System (WACS), South Atlantic Telecommunications Cable no.3 (SAT3) and Glo1 Cable.

Mr John Omo, Secretary-General, African Telecommunications Union, said the conference was very important because urgent collaboration was needed among all institutions to build an international submarine cable resilience network.

Omo said statistics showed that Africa was more vulnerable to cable cuts than other regions of the world because of its population and coastal terrain.

He said though the West Coast of Africa had major cable cuts, the region did not have sufficient collaborative frameworks to mitigate the challenge.

He said there was the need for individuals in the ecosystem to know their responsibilities in the event of cable cuts, adding that it was an emergency that needed to be dealt with.

“In terms of density as against population, we still have the lowest density worldwide.

“Because of the nature of our terrain and coastal systems, there are a lot more cable cuts in Africa than in any other region of the world.

“We have not had sufficient collaborative frameworks, even within countries or within our region, in terms of how to deal with this phenomenon, if there is a cable cut.

“If you think of issues of piracy and phishing in East Coast of Africa, we recently had a major cable cut.

“We need to have a system where each and every person in the ecosystem knows what to do in the event of a cable cut; it is an emergency and we need to deal with it,” he said.

Sandra Maximiano, Co-chair, Advisory Body for International Submarine Cable Resilience, said declarations at the summit showed the commitment of all organisations to partner in building a more resilient cable ecosystem.

Maximiano said the advisory board had formed three working groups that would deal with different aspects like risk mitigation, fostering collaboration, and time deployment of repairing submarine cables.

“We created these working groups so that they will synergise and submit their reports to the advisory board, after which there will be a timeline for implementation,” she said.

NAN reports that the two-day summit was attended by more than 300 delegates from across the world drawn from the 194 ITU-member countries.

Others in attendance were the Executive Vice-Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr Aminu Maida, Permanent-Secretary, Ministry of Communications, Innovations and Digital Economy, Faruk Yabo.

Others included Managing Director, NigComSat, Mrs Jane Egerton-Idehen and Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency, Malam Kashifu Inuwa.

Edited by Uche Anunne

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