Telecom companies of Ethiopia, Djibouti and Sudan have signed a tripartite agreement under what is called the Horizon Fiber Initiative to develop a high-capacity cross-border fibre corridor.
According to a statement issued by Ethio Telecom, the agreement establishes a resilient terrestrial fiber corridor connecting the international submarine cable landing stations in Djibouti, traversing Ethiopia, and extending onward to Sudan’s landing stations.
“This new route aims at creating a scalable, secure, and diversified regional connectivity pathway linking East Africa to global digital networks,” the statement said.
The Horizon Fiber Initiative is designed to significantly enhance international bandwidth capacity, strengthen network resilience and redundancy, and support the rapidly growing demand for data, cloud services, hyper scale connectivity, digital platforms, and cross-border data flows across the region.
“It responds directly to Africa’s accelerating digital economy driven by cloud adoption, fintech, e-commerce, AI, content delivery, and enterprise digitalization,” the statement noted.
Speaking at the event, CEO of Ethio-telecom Firehiwot Tamiru said the initiative is a core enabler of its Next Horizon: Digital and Beyond 2028 strategy, reinforcing the company’s ambition to evolve from a national operator into a regional digital connectivity and infrastructure leader.
“Horizon Fiber strengthens Ethiopia’s position as a strategic digital transit hub, supports international expansion, and underpins advanced digital services including cloud, data centers, enterprise solutions, and cross-border digital trade.
Through this strategic collaboration, the three operators are expected to leverage their complementary infrastructure assets, technical expertise, and operational capabilities to deliver multi-terabit optical fiber capacity to meet exponential traffic growth.
MG/as/APA