electricsheepafrica/africa-submarine-cable-intercept-topology

Africa Submarine Cable Intercept Topology

Electric Sheep Africa · Post-Quantum Cryptographic Exposure cluster · dataset DS-4 · v0.1

African digital infrastructure is being recorded by state actors today under the assumption it will be decryptable once quantum computers arrive (2030–2035 per NIST/NCSC/ENISA). This dataset is one dimension of the Africa-specific evidence for that claim.

What this dataset answers

Which African countries' traffic is most exposed at foreign cable-landing stations, and which jurisdiction does each cable hand traffic to?

Key findings (v0.1)

• 78 submarine cables land in at least one African country.
• 10 African countries have 100% of their cables landing in a foreign bulk-interception jurisdiction (Algeria, Ghana, Tunisia, Mauritania, Namibia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone).
• Every cable serving Ghana lands in the EU or UK; 7 of Nigeria's 8 do.

Files

ds4_country_exposure.csv (36 rows)

Column	Example
country	Algeria
n_cables	7
n_cables_landing_in_surveillance_jurisdiction	7
pct_cables_exposed	100.0
exposure_jurisdictions	France; Italy; Portugal; Spain

ds4_cable_exposure.csv (78 rows)

Column	Example
cable_id	2africa
cable	2Africa
rfs	2024
length_km	45,000 km
owners	Bayobab, China Mobile, Meta, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone…
n_landings	50
african_countries	Angola; Comoros; Côte d'Ivoire; Djibouti; Egypt; Gabon; Ghan…
n_african_landings	27
n_foreign_landings	23
lands_in_surveillance_jurisdiction	True
surveillance_jurisdictions	France; Italy; Portugal; Spain; United Kingdom

ds4_cable_landings.csv (494 rows)

Column	Example
cable_id	2africa
cable	2Africa
landing_country	Angola
landing_station	Luanda, Angola
is_african	True
surveillance_jurisdiction	False
surveillance_level	nan
surveillance_basis	nan

Method

Every submarine cable in the TeleGeography Submarine Cable Map (public v3 API) was retrieved, filtered to those with at least one African landing point, and each landing classified by jurisdiction. Non-African landings are flagged against a reference of jurisdictions with documented or legally-authorised bulk-interception programs (UK IPA 2016 / GCHQ Tempora, US FISA 702 / EO 12333, FR Loi Renseignement, DE BND, NL Wiv 2017, and EU national-security interception in PT/IT/ES).

Sources

TeleGeography Submarine Cable Map v3 (submarinecablemap.com).

Limitations

Landing-point jurisdiction is a structural exposure indicator, not proof of interception of any specific cable. Ownership and capacity fields depend on TeleGeography completeness.

How to cite

Electric Sheep Africa (2026). Africa Submarine Cable Intercept Topology (africa-submarine-cable-intercept-topology). African Cryptographic Exposure & Post-Quantum Risk dataset cluster. Hugging Face. https://huggingface.co/datasets/electricsheepafrica/africa-submarine-cable-intercept-topology

@dataset{esa_africa_submarine_cable_intercept_topology_2026,
  title  = {Africa Submarine Cable Intercept Topology},
  author = {Electric Sheep Africa},
  year   = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url    = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/electricsheepafrica/africa-submarine-cable-intercept-topology}
}

Part of the cluster

This is one of eight datasets in the African Cryptographic Exposure & Post-Quantum Risk cluster by Electric Sheep Africa. The others cover TLS deployment, certificate-authority dependency, algorithm inventory, submarine cable topology, IXP/routing exposure, the regulatory gap, incident history, and PQC migration cost. See the collection on the electricsheepafrica org page.

Methodology & ethics

All collection is passive and uses public data, or standard TLS handshakes against publicly reachable endpoints (the same a browser performs). No interception, no exploitation, no private access. Figures are v0.1 and reproducible from the open collector code.