Ethio telecom, Djibouti Telecom and Sudatel Group have advanced the pre-commercialisation phase of the Horizon Cross-Border Terrestrial Fiber Initiative, a regional connectivity project designed to strengthen digital infrastructure between Djibouti, Ethiopia and Sudan.
The initiative is being developed as a secure terrestrial fibre corridor connecting the three countries and providing global carriers and hyperscalers with an alternative low-latency route for subsea cable traffic across the Red Sea.
The corridor is expected to connect cable landing stations in Djibouti and Port Sudan through Ethiopia, creating an additional pathway for international data traffic and reducing reliance on individual subsea routes.
The latest progress followed a high-level stakeholders’ workshop held in Addis Ababa, where technology and connectivity companies discussed the commercial and technical requirements needed to advance the high-capacity corridor towards commercial operations.
Network architecture expertise for the project includes contributions from Nokia, Ciena and BringCom. The workshop also brought together representatives from major global technology and connectivity companies, including Google, Meta through HIPConsult, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Airtel Africa, Bayobab, WIOCC, center3, Saudi Vision and China Mobile International.
According to Ethio telecom, participating operators and technology companies expressed interest in using and monetising the Horizon corridor’s multi-terabit capacity. The interest indicates potential demand for additional high-capacity terrestrial connectivity linking East Africa and international network infrastructure.
The Horizon initiative is jointly being developed by Ethio telecom, Djibouti Telecom and Sudatel Group. In addition to data transport, the infrastructure is expected to support colocation and hosting services, with landing access available in both Djibouti and Sudan.
The corridor is being designed with a protected and redundant architecture intended to improve network resilience, reliability and performance. Such infrastructure could provide an alternative route for traffic in the event of disruptions affecting other connectivity pathways.
The project is also being positioned to support growing digital workloads across the region. These include cloud computing, artificial intelligence, financial technology, e-commerce and digital content delivery, all of which are increasing demand for reliable, high-capacity international connectivity.
For global carriers and hyperscalers, additional terrestrial routes can provide greater network diversity and potentially improve latency and resilience when moving traffic between subsea cable systems and regional data infrastructure.
For the participating African telecom operators, the initiative represents an effort to combine national networks and regional infrastructure to create a commercially viable cross-border digital corridor.
The Horizon project also highlights the growing importance of terrestrial fibre infrastructure in complementing Africa’s expanding subsea cable ecosystem. As more international cables reach African landing stations, inland connectivity routes will play an increasingly important role in moving capacity to data centres, cloud platforms, enterprises and consumers across the continent.
The partners’ focus on pre-commercialisation, capacity monetisation and services such as colocation and hosting indicates that the initiative is being developed not only as a transport route, but as part of a broader regional digital infrastructure ecosystem.
If successfully commercialised, the Horizon corridor could strengthen connectivity between the Horn of Africa and global networks while providing carriers and hyperscalers with additional options for routing high-volume digital traffic across the Red Sea region.
