Securing Africa’s digital backbone: Subsea cable vulnerability and the case for an African critical infrastructure protection regime

Africa's participation in the digital economy rests on a small number of subsea cables whose ownership, routing, repair and protection largely escape African control. Three disruption episodes in 2024 – in the Red Sea, off Côte d'Ivoire and off KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa – exposed the continent’s vulnerability to chokepoints, foreign-owned infrastructure and scarce repair capacity, a pattern confirmed again in September 2025. While the European Union has consolidated a layered critical infrastructure regime through the revised Network and Information Security (NIS-2) and Critical Entities Resilience directives and its 2025 Action Plan on Cable Security, no equivalent continental framework exists in Africa: the Malabo Convention is silent on infrastructure resilience, and the Digital Transformation Strategy prioritises access over protection. Distinguishing between protection, resilience and autonomy, this article proposes design principles for an African critical digital infrastructure protection regime anchored in African Union instruments, regional economic communities and Africa’s emerging cable diplomacy.