ECOWAS‘S INFRASTRUCTURE: A REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE

**Table 4.5  Regional roaming networks within ECOWAS**

|Network|Countries|
|---|---|
|Orange Zone|Available for subscribers in Côte d‘Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, and Senegal|
|Zain One|Available for subscribers in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone|
|One World of MTN|Available for subscribers in Benin, Côte d‘Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Nigeria.|

Source: Derived from Ampah and others 2009.

ECOWAS has several submarine fiber optic cables. The main international cable in the region is the South Atlantic 3 (SAT-3)/WASC, which extends from Malaysia to South Africa and then up the West Coast of Africa to Portugal and Spain. In addition, the Atlantis-2 cable runs from South America to Cape Verde and Senegal and then up to Portugal and Spain. The 9,800-kilometer Glo-1 cable was launched in September 2009 with a landing station in Nigeria. It will connect several other West African countries with onward extensions to London and New York.<sup>5</sup> Several additional undersea cables are planned, so that by the year 2012 West Africa will likely be served by at least five submarine cables (4.3). For example, the planned Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) cable,<sup>6</sup> which will run from France to Gabon, is expected to be operational by 2011. Seventeen operators signed the memorandum of understanding in November 2008. ACE will connect all countries along the west coast of Africa, from Morocco to South Africa (more than 25 countries in Africa and Western Europe).<sup>7</sup> The 14,000-kilometer Main One cable system is expected to connect Africa with Europe, the Americas, and Asia in 2010. The initial deployment will connect Portugal to Nigeria, with a landing station in Ghana. After this is complete, the network will be expanded to connect South Africa, Angola, Gabon, Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d‘Ivoire, and Morocco.<sup>8</sup> The West African Cable System (WACS) will link Europe, West Africa and South Africa. The WACS consortium has 11 operators from 9 countries.<sup>9</sup> Nevertheless, quite a few countries are unconnected to the submarine cables, and the intraregional backbone remains incomplete. At present, only five coastal ECOWAS countries have landing stations for SAT3—Benin, Côte d‘Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal. The other coastal countries are completely bypassed at present. Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone lack terrestrial fiber optic connections with the regional network that might provide at least some form of indirect access. The landlocked countries also remain unconnected, although new infrastructure is already underway. The planned ACE cable includes landing stations for the Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, and Togo. In addition, it will increase competition in the countries that already have access to submarine infrastructure by providing an alternative route for traffic.

> 5 http://allafrica.com/stories/200909071164.html 6 http://www.orange.com/en_EN/press/press_releases/cp090609en.jsp

> 7 http://www.orange.com/en_EN/press/press_releases/cp090609en.jsp

> 8 http://www.mainonecable.com

> 9 http://allafrica.com/stories/200910270242.html

61