Optical & Fixed Networks

Mali and Senegal interconnect national fibre networks

Mali and Senegal interconnect national fibre networks

Mali’s La Société Malienne de Transmission et de Diffusion (SMTD-SA) and Sénégal Numérique (SENUM-SA) have reportedly commissioned a new fibre optic link that directly connects their respective country’s national fibre networks.

According to news agency Ecofin, the new link – which was announced on Monday – gives landlocked Mali additional routes to subsea cable systems passing through both Senegal and Cape Verde.

SENUM-SA owns the Senegal Horn of Africa Regional Express (SHARE) Cable that connects Dakar to Praia in Cape Verde, which interconnects with the EllaLink cable running between Portugal and Brazil, as well as the West Africa Cable System (WACS) connecting Portugal to South Africa.

Dakar also hosts landing stations for the 2Africa, ACE and SAT-3 subsea cables.

The Mali-Senegal link sets in stone an agreement reached by SMTD-SA and SENUM-SA during a regional workshop held in April to develop a roadmap for the West African Network of National Backbones (ROA-BN/WANB) project.

That project aims to interconnect the national backbones of nine West African countries – including Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone and Senegal – to spur development of cross-border connectivity and help reduce intra-country communication costs.

The project aims to connect 80% of the collective population of all nine countries by 2033.



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