Djibouti: TECHz Magazine – News Desk
Ethio telecom, Djibouti Telecom, and Sudatel Group have officially signed a tripartite strategic agreement to deploy a cross-border, multi-terabit optical fiber infrastructure. Dubbed the Horizon Fiber Initiative, the February 2026 contract signed in Djibouti City moves the project from a December 2024 Memorandum of Understanding into the active deployment phase.
The initiative establishes a terrestrial fiber corridor linking international submarine cable landing stations on the Red Sea in Djibouti, running overland through Ethiopia, and terminating at landing stations in Port Sudan. This carrier-grade, low-latency connectivity targets global hyperscalers, content providers, enterprise data centers, and regional telecommunications wholesalers to handle Africa’s surging demand for cloud computing and e-commerce.
By pooling infrastructure assets and technical frameworks, the operators are accelerating commercialization while prioritizing shared redundancy over regional fragmentation. The project serves as a core enabler of Ethio telecom’s Next Horizon: Digital & Beyond 2028 Strategy to position Ethiopia as a cross-border digital transit hub, cements Djibouti Telecom’s role as an interconnection powerhouse, and allows Sudatel Group to set a benchmark for African telecom collaboration. Linking the Red Sea corridor directly to landlocked interior networks introduces critical route diversity, reducing reliance on singular pathways and mitigating the risk of regional internet blackouts.
