Douala, Cameroon

Douala, Cameroon: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Douala is the largest city in Cameroon and sits within the country's Littoral Region on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa. As a submarine cable landing point, Douala connects Cameroon to the broader West African coastal corridor through one international submarine cable system. That single cable links Douala to a chain of West and Central African nations, enabling connectivity across a significant stretch of the African Atlantic seaboard.

The cable landing at Douala is part of the SAT-3/WASC system, one of the earliest submarine cable investments to reach this coastline. Through this system, Douala participates in a regional West African corridor that spans from Cameroon northwestward along the Gulf of Guinea, touching Angola, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, and Nigeria. This positions Douala as an interconnection point between Cameroon and several of its regional neighbors along the same cable route.

Cables Landing at Douala, Cameroon

SAT-3/WASC is the sole submarine cable landing at Douala. With a total length of 14,350 km and a ready-for-service year of 2002, SAT-3/WASC was among the first major submarine cable systems to serve this segment of the African Atlantic coast. In addition to Douala, the cable lands in Angola, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, and Nigeria, forming a multi-country coastal link across West and Central Africa. The 2002 RFS date also marks the year that submarine cable infrastructure first reached Cameroon.

Regional Context

Within Cameroon, submarine cable infrastructure is distributed across three landing points: Douala, Kribi, and Limbe. Kribi hosts three cables, making it the most connected landing point in the country, while Limbe, like Douala, hosts a single cable. Douala therefore sits alongside Limbe at the lower end of the country's cable count distribution, with Kribi having emerged as the primary multi-cable hub in Cameroon's submarine network.

Network Role

Douala functions as a single-cable terminus within the broader Cameroonian submarine cable infrastructure, connected exclusively via SAT-3/WASC to the West African coastal corridor. Through this cable, the city maintains a direct submarine link to six other African nations — Angola, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, and Nigeria — along an Atlantic-facing route spanning 14,350 km. While it does not operate as a multi-cable hub in the way that Kribi now does, Douala's connection through SAT-3/WASC represents the original submarine cable foothold established in Cameroon upon that system's commissioning in 2002.

As Cameroon's overall submarine cable network has grown to five cables across three landing points, Douala's role reflects that of an early-generation single-system terminus rather than a concentration point for multiple cable systems. Its position in the regional submarine cable graph is defined by its participation in the SAT-3/WASC West African corridor — a link that connects Cameroon's largest city to a chain of Atlantic-facing African nations through a single, long-established cable route.