WATCH THE VIDEO HERE Charles Murito, Google’s head of government relations and public policy in Africa, has called on African governments to classify fibre optic cables as critical infrastructure to safeguard the continent’s communications backbone. Murito disclosed this at the Africa Tech Conference on Thursday, emphasizing the importance of protecting terrestrial and subsea fibre cables, which are essential to Africa’s growing digital economy. Murito highlighted the growing threat to fibre optic infrastructure from criminal syndicates that damage cables in attempts to steal batteries and generators from telecom tower sites. He emphasized the importance of classifying fibre optic infrastructure as a critical investment, which would ensure stricter consequences for malicious damage. “When you classify that as a critical investment, then that ensures that if people maliciously damage that investment, there are stringent repercussions,” he explained. Google has heavily invested in African connectivity infrastructure, including the Equiano subsea cable linking Africa with Europe and, more recently, the Umoja cable a direct route between Africa and Australia. He emphasized that the “harmonization” of policies around cable installation would simplify operations for telecom and tech companies and accelerate network expansion efforts. Naijaonpoint reported that Google’s tools and services, including Google Search, Ads, Google Play, YouTube, and Google Cloud, contributed an estimated $1.8 billion to Nigeria’s economy in 2023.
African governments urged to protect fibre optic infrastructure to boost tech development
