The architecture of the Internet is not built on the present, but on bets two decades ahead. Séverine Legrix de la Salle, Vice President of CSR and Communication at Orange Wholesale, has confirmed the launch of the Via Africa project, a new submarine cable system that will traverse the Atlantic coast to connect Europe with South Africa. The initiative, formalized through a memorandum of understanding, integrates a strategic alliance between Orange Group, Canalink (a subsidiary of the Technological Institute and Renewable Energies of Tenerife), GUILAB, International Mauritania Telecom, Orange Côte d’Ivoire, Sonatel, and Silverlinks.
This deployment is not merely an expansion of bandwidth. It represents the creation of a digital sovereignty infrastructure on the continent that will register the highest numerical growth of the coming decades. The Via Africa project includes critical landing points in Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria, extending to the southern cone of the continent. For the operators involved, the goal is to offer resilient and diversified connectivity that responds to the accelerating demand for data in sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel.
The Strategic Role of Canalink and the Canary Node
The inclusion of Canalink in the consortium reaffirms the position of the Canary Islands as the ‘dry port’ of data in the Central Atlantic. The participation of the Tenerife-based firm in a project of this magnitude, alongside the wholesale division of Orange, places the Archipelago at the center of the digital corridor that will connect London to Cape Town in nanoseconds. This Atlantic route aims to provide a low-latency alternative to current systems, strengthening the security of communications between Europe and the emerging economies of West Africa.
Legrix de la Salle emphasizes that these decisions are made with a lead time of 20 to 25 years. ‘It is about laying cables under the oceans when no one yet imagines the traffic they will carry,’ says the executive. The signing of this memorandum of understanding is, in her words, the ‘first stone’ of an infrastructure that will shape future intercontinental communications.
