Africa’s subsea connectivity depends on a single permanently stationed repair vessel, the 43‑year‑old Leon Thevenin, which maintains roughly 60,000 km of cable from Madagascar to Ghana. Breaks are rising due to unusual underwater landslides in the Congo Canyon, while repairs are costly and technically delicate. Globally there are only 62 repair ships for the undersea network carrying traffic for Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and others.
— This reveals a fragile chokepoint in global digital infrastructure, with implications for economic development, AI/data traffic, and national resilience strategies.
msmash
2025.10.02
76% relevant
Like Africa’s dependence on the Leon Thevenin, Tonga’s outage and five‑week repair by SubCom’s Reliance underscore how few cable ships and long repair windows create single points of failure for nations’ connectivity and economies.
msmash
2025.09.20
100% relevant
The Leon Thevenin’s role, Orange Marine’s $70k–$120k/day operating costs, Congo Canyon landslide‑driven breaks, and the statistic that only 62 cable repair ships operate worldwide.
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