The new EU‑funded Blue‑Raman cable promises to connect Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania directly to the Europe–Middle East–India digital corridor. What does this extension really mean for telecom operators, regulators and investors across the East African Community (EAC)?

“The extension of the Blue‑Raman cable will improve internet connectivity, reduce bandwidth costs and strengthen the EAC digital economy.” — William Ruto, President of Kenya, The Exchange Africa

A Blue‑Raman project now embedded in the Global Gateway agenda

Kenyan president William Ruto announced in Brussels that the European Union would finance the extension of the Blue‑Raman submarine cable to link Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania, presenting this support as a transformational investment for regional connectivity. Kenyan authorities explain that this European backing forms part of a broader package of investments in digital transformation and submarine cable infrastructure expansion in favour of the EAC. This explicit anchoring in the EU‑Kenya digital partnership turns Blue‑Raman into a symbol of the Global Gateway strategy in the digital sphere.

The Blue‑Raman system, unveiled in 2021 and driven by Google together with Sparkle and other operators, is a cable network built on an open‑access model designed to boost competition between internet providers while linking Europe to India via the Middle East and the eastern seaboard of Africa. The European Investment Bank’s project sheet describes Blue‑Raman as a fibre‑optic cable system of about 12,700 kilometres connecting Europe to India, crossing the Middle East and including a branch landing on the east coast of Africa. Read together, these political and financial descriptions show a project conceived as a strategic corridor rather than a mere technical upgrade.

The European Commission presents Blue‑Raman as the backbone of the EU‑Africa‑India digital corridor, stressing that public intervention will deliver diversified and secure connectivity between Europe, Djibouti as an East African hub and India, with research and education uses placed at the forefront. This institutional focus does not prevent commercial operators from benefitting indirectly from additional international capacity.

Why the EAC needs another international cable

A string of outages affecting PEACE, EASSy and SEACOM systems along Africa’s east coast, including a major incident on the PEACE cable in March 2025, reminded regional authorities of the macro‑economic cost of depending on a handful of concentrated international routes. The EASSy system already links several landing points in East Africa, from Port Sudan to Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, but its integration into bundles transiting through the Bab el‑Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea exposes it to elevated geopolitical and security risks. Against this backdrop, a new route that bypasses some chokepoints and multiplies landing points looks like an insurance policy for EAC operators.

Recent failures triggered cascading service degradation for banks, mobile‑money platforms, outsourcing firms and public administrations, showing that submarine cable resilience has become an issue of economic continuity as much as of service quality. Data‑centre players in East Africa underline that the expansion of cloud and content‑delivery hubs in the region rests on the availability of multiple international paths, with hubs like Mombasa and Djibouti already hosting several cables yet remaining vulnerable to simultaneous incidents. For EAC telecom regulators, the challenge is therefore no longer only to add capacity, but to diversify physical corridors and the actors that control them.

Recent mapping‑based analysis shows that Kenya already hosts several submarine cables with more landings planned, while Tanzania, Djibouti and Somalia also count multiple systems but still offer limited redundancy relative to traffic growth. In the Horn of Africa Initiative’s digital integration matrix, Blue‑Raman already appears as a flagship regional project alongside digital‑market and cybersecurity initiatives explicitly targeting Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti within or around the EAC. For investors, this convergence between African regional agendas and European funding strengthens the visibility of the infrastructure pipeline.

Lower costs, but also a reshaped wholesale market

President Ruto argues that increasing international capacity through Blue‑Raman will help cut bandwidth costs for operators, an argument backed by research from a development‑focused foundation indicating that doubling international capacity can significantly reduce both fixed and mobile broadband prices. A recent note recalls that studies estimate an immediate drop of around   30 %   in fixed broadband prices and up to half for mobile broadband when international capacity is doubled, illustrating the potential price impact if additional capacity is effectively passed through to wholesale and then retail markets. If that dynamic materialises in the EAC, it could accelerate progress towards the affordability targets embedded in regional digital strategies.

The choice of an open‑access model for Blue‑Raman, allowing different operators to acquire capacity on a non‑discriminatory basis, is presented as a key lever for intensifying competition between access providers and wholesale carriers in East Africa. Existing agreements between Sparkle and specialised investors to provide virtual‑fibre solutions over Blue‑Raman already show that the system can support sophisticated capacity‑as‑a‑service arrangements linking Mumbai and Djibouti with several European landing points. For regional telecom groups, this opens the door to new capacity‑financing structures that compete head‑on with traditional cable consortia.

Announcements under the EU‑Kenya digital partnership highlight the expected impact of Blue‑Raman on boosting regional capacity, reducing bandwidth costs and improving service reliability, with an explicit ambition to cement Kenya’s role as a digital corridor for East Africa. At a high‑level event on the Mattei Plan and Global Gateway, the president of the European Commission underlined that extending Blue‑Raman from Djibouti to Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania would connect East Africa to huge digital markets while supporting cooperation in research and education. This blend of development, integration and geopolitical goals also creates a more complex competitive environment for local operators, where control over international routes becomes a political asset.

Digital sovereignty, dependency risks and the role of local players

Commission documents stress the idea of “trusted and secure” connectivity along the EU‑Africa‑India corridor, highlighting that Blue‑Raman should deliver ultra‑high‑speed capacity primarily aimed at research and education networks, under European cyber‑security standards. An infographic on IMEC’s digital‑connectivity pillar describes Blue‑Raman as a submarine‑cable subsystem linking Europe to India with intermediate landings in East Africa – notably Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania – as part of a digital corridor between the EU, Africa and India. For EAC states, the question is how to reconcile this integration into a European‑designed strategic architecture with their own ambitions for digital sovereignty and data control.

East African data‑centre operators note that soaring demand for cloud, streaming and AI services makes new cables unavoidable, but that local value capture depends on regulators’ and operators’ ability to attract internet exchange points, content caches and cloud infrastructure close to the landing stations. The Horn of Africa digital‑integration roadmap lists Blue‑Raman alongside regional projects on digital‑market integration and cyber‑security, suggesting that authorities see such cables not as ends in themselves but as foundations for a more integrated market for digital services and data. The core battle will therefore play out less on the cable route than on interconnection rules and data‑location policy.

Regional observers emphasise that African economies are becoming increasingly data‑driven and that control over “digital highways” by external players is emerging as a new form of influence, comparable to that historically exerted through ports, roads or power grids. Analyses of the Global Gateway programme often read it as a response to other global infrastructure strategies, placing EAC countries at the junction of competing offers of connectivity and finance. In this environment, the ability of EAC operators and governments to negotiate fair access conditions, encourage local capital participation and avoid over‑reliance on a single corridor will be central to long‑term sustainability.

What to watch: three tests for Blue‑Raman’s real impact

Project sponsors highlight the improved resilience Blue‑Raman should offer against existing‑cable outages, the prospect of lower bandwidth costs and the alignment with EAC digital‑transformation priorities. Investment announcements between the EU and Kenya suggest that this cable could become a cornerstone of national “digital superhighway” agendas, with knock‑on effects on data‑centre, sovereign‑cloud and e‑government strategies. The next rounds of regulatory decisions will show whether this promise translates into a balanced sharing of benefits between donors, operators and end‑users.

Key signals for investors and regulators include how Blue‑Raman capacity is folded into existing wholesale offers and whether new regional virtual‑fibre players emerge. They also include how far open‑access obligations at landing stations are enforced in practice and how the EU‑Africa‑India corridor is articulated with competing projects along the East African seaboard.

Key takeaways

• Blue‑Raman has become a flagship Global Gateway instrument towards the EAC, with an EU‑backed extension from Djibouti to Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania into the Europe–Middle East–India corridor.
• The cable adds a new international capacity route that responds both to resilience gaps revealed by PEACE, EASSy and SEACOM outages and to booming demand for cloud, AI and video in East Africa.
• Its open‑access design and associated virtual‑fibre structures can intensify competition on the international wholesale market, while raising questions about local value capture.
• The EAC’s digital sovereignty will hinge on how states regulate landings, interconnection and data location so as not to become overly dependent on a corridor architected primarily in Brussels.
• Blue‑Raman’s real impact will be assessed against three tests: the trajectory of wholesale prices, the actual diversification of physical routes, and alignment with regional digital‑integration roadmaps.

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