Angola's Submarine Cable Network — Complete Atlas

Angola sits at one of the most consequential submarine cable junctions on the planet. This is not a metaphor. The country’s Atlantic coastline — stretching 1,650 kilometers from Cabinda in the north to the Cunene River border with Namibia in the south — provides landing points for cable systems that connect three continents. Africa, South America, and Europe all converge in the waters off Luanda. No other country in Sub-Saharan Africa occupies an equivalent position in the topology of global undersea telecommunications.

As of early 2026, five major submarine cable systems either land in Angola, are under active deployment with confirmed Angolan landing stations, or provide capacity to Angolan networks through indefeasible rights of use (IRU) agreements. Together, these systems represent aggregate design capacity exceeding 250 terabits per second, though Angola’s actual lit capacity and domestic allocation represent a fraction of that theoretical maximum. The gap between total system capacity and usable Angolan bandwidth is one of the defining tensions of the country’s digital infrastructure story.

The Five Cable Systems

The cables serving Angola can be grouped into three generations, each reflecting different geopolitical and commercial logics.

First generation — the consortium model. WACS (West Africa Cable System), operational since 2012, exemplifies the traditional approach to submarine cable construction: a consortium of incumbent telecom operators across multiple countries sharing the capital cost and allocating capacity among themselves. WACS connects South Africa to the United Kingdom via 14 West African landing points, including Sangano, south of Luanda. Its 14.5 Tbps design capacity represented transformational bandwidth when it arrived, breaking the dependency on SAT-3/WASC, the aging cable that had served West Africa since 2002.

Second generation — the sovereign infrastructure play. SACS (South Atlantic Cable System) and MONET represent Angola Cables’ ambition to position the country as a genuine transit hub rather than merely an endpoint. SACS, operational since 2018, runs 6,165 kilometers directly from Luanda to Fortaleza, Brazil — the first submarine cable ever to cross the South Atlantic. MONET extends the reach from Fortaleza to Miami and Sao Paulo, giving Angola Cables a complete Americas pathway. Together, these cables turned Angola from a bandwidth consumer into a potential bandwidth wholesaler, capable of offering transit between Africa and the Americas at lower latency than traditional routes via Europe.

Third generation — the hyperscaler era. 2Africa (backed by Meta) and Equiano (backed by Google) represent the entry of global technology companies into submarine cable infrastructure. These cables dwarf their predecessors in capacity. 2Africa, at 45,000 kilometers and 180 Tbps total design capacity, is the longest subsea cable ever built. Equiano, running from Lisbon to Cape Town, brings Google’s open architecture and massive capacity to the West African coast. Both systems include Angolan landing stations, and their arrival fundamentally alters the competitive dynamics of bandwidth supply in the country.

Aggregate Capacity Analysis

The combined design capacity of all cable systems with Angolan landing points or IRU positions exceeds 250 Tbps. This figure requires careful interpretation:

Design capacity refers to the maximum throughput achievable when all fiber pairs are lit and equipped with the latest coherent optical transponders. Actual lit capacity at any given time is typically a fraction of design capacity, determined by equipment deployment decisions driven by demand. Angola’s allocated capacity across these systems — the bandwidth that Angolan operators can actually use — is smaller still, determined by ownership stakes, IRU agreements, and commercial arrangements.

The critical metric is not total design capacity but available international bandwidth per capita. Angola’s approximately 36 million people share international bandwidth that, while growing rapidly, still lags behind North African countries and South Africa on a per-capita basis. The arrival of 2Africa and Equiano should substantially improve this ratio by the end of 2026, assuming landing station infrastructure and domestic backhaul keep pace.

Strategic Significance

Angola’s cable position matters for three reasons that extend beyond domestic connectivity.

South Atlantic transit. Before SACS, all data traffic between Africa and South America had to route through Europe or North America, adding thousands of kilometers of distance and tens of milliseconds of latency. SACS created a direct path. For Brazilian companies expanding into African markets — and for African enterprises targeting Brazil’s 215 million consumers — the latency reduction is commercially meaningful. Angola Cables’ AngoNAP facilities in both Luanda and Fortaleza provide the peering and interconnection infrastructure to capitalize on this routing advantage.

Alternative to European transit. The traditional topology of African internet connectivity routes most traffic northward to European hubs in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Marseille. This creates dependency on a small number of landing points and peering exchanges. Angola’s direct Americas connectivity via SACS and MONET, combined with intra-African cables like 2Africa, offers an alternative architecture where African traffic does not need to transit through Europe by default. This matters for latency, cost, and data sovereignty.

Redundancy and resilience. Multiple cable landings from geographically diverse routes reduce the risk of catastrophic connectivity loss from cable cuts, natural disasters, or geopolitical disruption. Angola’s position on cable systems running both north-south along the African coast and east-west across the South Atlantic provides structural redundancy that few other Sub-Saharan African countries can match.

Landing Station Infrastructure

All submarine cables require shore-end infrastructure where the subsea fiber connects to terrestrial networks. In Angola, this infrastructure is concentrated around Luanda, with the primary landing station complexes at:

Sangano Beach — Located approximately 40 kilometers south of Luanda, Sangano is the landing point for WACS and has served as the primary cable landing site since 2012. The beach station connects via buried terrestrial fiber to Angola Cables’ facilities in Luanda and to the broader national backbone.

Cacuaco / North Luanda — The landing area for SACS and the planned landing point for 2Africa and potentially Equiano. This location provides geographic separation from Sangano, improving resilience against localized events affecting either site.

Landing station security, power reliability, and terrestrial backhaul capacity are as critical as the submarine cables themselves. A cable with 180 Tbps of design capacity is worthless if the landing station has unreliable power or the terrestrial fiber connecting it to the nearest data center is a single 10 Gbps link. Angola Cables and the government have invested in redundant power systems, diesel backup generators, and multiple terrestrial fiber paths from landing stations to urban network points of presence.

Ownership and Control

The ownership structure of Angola’s submarine cable access reveals the country’s digital power dynamics.

Angola Cables is the dominant player, with direct ownership stakes in WACS and SACS, and an IRU position on MONET. The company is majority-owned by Angola Telecom (the state incumbent) with Sonangol (the state oil company) holding a significant minority position. This means the Angolan state, through its corporate proxies, controls the primary gateway through which international bandwidth enters the country.

2Africa’s consortium structure introduces new dynamics. The cable’s investors include Meta, MTN, Vodafone, China Mobile International, Orange, and others. Angolan participation in the consortium and the terms of capacity access at the Luanda landing station will determine whether 2Africa meaningfully disrupts the Angola Cables bottleneck or merely adds capacity that flows through existing gatekeepers.

Google’s Equiano follows a different model entirely. Google is the sole investor and owner, using an open-access landing station approach that theoretically allows any operator to purchase capacity without going through a national incumbent. Whether this model survives contact with Angolan regulatory and commercial realities remains to be seen.

The Bottleneck Problem

Angola’s submarine cable infrastructure is, on paper, impressive. The bottleneck is not international capacity per se but rather the chain of dependencies between a cable’s landing point and an end user’s device. This chain includes:

• Landing station to data center backhaul — fiber connections from beach landing stations to urban data centers and internet exchange points
• Data center interconnection — peering and transit arrangements within AngoNAP and other facilities
• National backbone distribution — fiber from Luanda to provincial capitals and secondary cities
• Last-mile access — the connection from the nearest point of presence to the end user’s premises or mobile device

Each link in this chain can constrain throughput regardless of how much capacity sits on the submarine cable. The persistent gap between Angola’s submarine cable capacity and its actual broadband performance metrics reflects bottlenecks at every stage of this chain, not insufficient international bandwidth.

Regulatory Framework

The Instituto Angolano das Comunicacoes (INACOM) regulates telecommunications infrastructure, including submarine cable landing rights and international gateway licensing. Key regulatory considerations include:

• Landing rights — Any submarine cable seeking to land in Angola must obtain approval from INACOM. The terms of landing rights agreements, including whether they grant open-access or exclusive-access arrangements, directly affect competitive dynamics.
• International gateway licensing — Operating an international telecommunications gateway requires an INACOM license. The number and terms of these licenses determine how many operators can independently access submarine cable capacity.
• Infrastructure sharing mandates — Government policy increasingly requires sharing of passive infrastructure (ducts, towers, landing stations) to promote competition and reduce redundant investment.

The regulatory environment is evolving. Angola’s 2022 telecommunications law expanded provisions for infrastructure sharing and open access, but implementation and enforcement remain works in progress.

Investment Flows

Submarine cable investment in and around Angola comes from diverse sources:

• State investment through Angola Cables, funded by Angola Telecom and Sonangol equity, with additional support from Angolan development banks
• Consortium contributions from multinational telecom operators participating in WACS, 2Africa, and other multi-party cable systems
• Hyperscaler direct investment by Google (Equiano) and Meta (2Africa) as part of their global infrastructure strategies
• Development finance from institutions like the World Bank and African Development Bank, which have funded complementary terrestrial infrastructure connecting cable landing points to underserved areas

Total investment in submarine cable systems serving Angola, including proportional allocation of multi-country systems, exceeds $2 billion over the 2010-2026 period. This figure includes cable construction, landing station development, and associated terrestrial infrastructure.

Future Outlook

The submarine cable landscape serving Angola will continue to evolve through 2030. Key developments to watch include:

Capacity lighting on 2Africa and Equiano. Both cables are in various stages of deployment and activation. The pace at which capacity is lit and made available in the Angolan market will determine whether the theoretical bandwidth increase translates to practical improvement in connectivity.

New cable announcements. Several additional cable projects targeting the African Atlantic coast are in planning or early development stages. These could add further capacity and introduce new commercial models to the Angolan market.

Competitive access. The critical question is whether new cable capacity translates to lower prices and broader access for Angolan consumers and enterprises, or whether existing gatekeepers maintain their position. The answer depends on regulatory enforcement, landing station access terms, and the willingness of new cable owners to invest in local interconnection infrastructure.

Terrestrial backhaul expansion. International bandwidth without adequate domestic distribution is stranded capacity. The government’s ongoing investment in national fiber backbone expansion and the private sector’s terrestrial network buildout will determine how much of Angola’s impressive submarine cable endowment reaches the population.

This atlas tracks each cable system individually, with dedicated pages providing technical specifications, ownership details, capacity analysis, and strategic assessment. Navigate to any cable system page for the full intelligence dossier.