Guinea joins Medusa Africa submarine cable

Guinea officially joined the Medusa Africa submarine cable project, giving the country its second international subsea link.

The Republic of Guinea has joined the Medusa Africa submarine cable project by signing a construction and maintenance (C&MA) agreement which gives the country its second international subsea link.

Under the C&MA, Guinéenne de Large Bande (GUILAB), the local public-private telecommunications infrastructure provider, will act as the landing party for the Medusa Africa cable, managing its operation, maintenance and overall infrastructure for a 25-year period.

Speaking at a ceremony in Conakry, the country's capital, Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah described the project as an "imperative" for sovereignty and national security.

According to Bah, digital development is now essential to the country's economic competitiveness.

He also underscored the need to fast-track the expansion of the national fiber-optic network, which is already in operation, to improve the distribution of Internet capacity nationwide.

Guinea Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah said joining the Medusa Africa submarine cable project is 'imperative' for sovereignty and national security. (Source: Republic of Guinea's Prime Minister's Office)

The Medusa Africa project involves deploying a submarine cable linking Europe, North Africa, West Africa and the Middle East.

For Guinea, this infrastructure serves as a redundancy measure to mitigate the risks of relying on a single international route.

There are already a number of cables surrounding the continent and several systems linking Africa to other regions.

The Guinea announcement comes as other African countries are either joining or planning to join subsea cable projects.

Just last week, the EllaLink submarine cable landed in the second largest city in Mauritania, Nouadhibou , giving the country a second direct and secure connection to Europe.

In February 2026, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria signed a landmark subsea fiber-optic agreement aimed at expanding connectivity, regional cybersecurity and uninterrupted high-speed Internet.

In November 2025, the consortium behind 2Africa, a new subsea cable surrounding the African continent, announced the completion of the new system's core infrastructure .

In August 2025, Telecom Egypt and telecoms service provider NaiTel completed the laying of the express subsea cable Coral Bridge connecting Egypt and Jordan .

In July 2025, Algérie Télécom and Sparkle signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop a new subsea cable linking Italy and Algeria .

Even as many countries sign deals aimed at connecting Africa to the world, subsea cables occasionally face reliability problems: In January 2026, a technical failure on the West Africa Cable System (WACS), which connects Europe to the African continent, caused Internet disruptions in the Democratic Republic of Congo .

Associate Editor, Connecting Africa

Matshepo joined Connecting Africa as Associate Editor in May 2022. The South Africa-based journalist has over 10 years' experience and previously worked as a digital content producer for talk radio 702 and started her career as a community journalist for Caxton.

She has been reporting on breaking news for most of her career, however, she has always had a love for tech news.

With an Honors degree in Journalism and Media Studies from Wits University, she has aspirations to study further.