Nouakchott, Mauritania

Nouakchott: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Nouakchott, the capital and largest city of Mauritania, lies in the southwestern part of the country along the Atlantic coast. As the administrative and economic center of Mauritania, the city also serves as one of the country's two submarine cable landing points. A single submarine cable — the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) system — connects Nouakchott to the international submarine cable network, linking Mauritania with destinations along both the West African coast and Europe.

The ACE cable establishes a corridor that runs from France in the north, along the western edge of Africa, through a series of West and Central African nations, making Nouakchott part of a significant intercontinental and regional connectivity route. This positions Nouakchott within a broader network of landing points spanning multiple continents.

Cables Landing at Nouakchott

Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) is a 17,000 km submarine cable system that reached ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2012. In addition to Nouakchott, the cable lands in Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, France, Gabon, and Gambia. The system connects West and Central African nations to Europe, running along the Atlantic coastline and offering Mauritania a direct link to European networks as well as to multiple neighboring West African countries.

Regional Context

Mauritania's submarine cable infrastructure is served by two landing points: Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, each hosting one cable. Nouakchott's single cable, the ACE system, mirrors the scale of connectivity at Nouadhibou, meaning that neither city dominates as a multi-cable hub within the country. Together, the two landing points account for all of Mauritania's submarine cable capacity, with the first cable in the country landing in 2012.

Network Role

Nouakchott functions as a single-cable terminus, with the ACE system providing its sole submarine connection to the outside world. Through ACE, the city is linked to a chain of West African landing points — including those in Gambia, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon — as well as to France, enabling both regional West African connectivity and intercontinental reach toward Europe. The cable's 17,000 km length underscores the geographic scale of the corridor that Nouakchott participates in.

As one of only two landing points in a country where submarine cable infrastructure dates entirely from 2012, Nouakchott occupies a straightforward but meaningful position in the West African submarine cable graph, connecting Mauritania's capital to a system that ties together more than half a dozen nations along the Atlantic seaboard.