Innovation is often associated with flashy startups, artificial intelligence, venture capital and the latest software application.
But some of the most consequential innovations are almost invisible.
Thousands of metres beneath the Atlantic Ocean, fibre-optic cables carry enormous volumes of the world's internet traffic. They connect businesses to customers, financial institutions to markets, cloud platforms to users and African startups to the global digital economy.
That is why the arrival of Google's Equiano subsea cable in Lomé, Togo, in 2022 was much bigger than the landing of another telecommunications cable.
It was a statement about the importance of digital infrastructure — and about how a relatively small West African country could position itself as a gateway into the continent's increasingly digital economy.
Google announced in March 2022 that Equiano had arrived in Lomé, making Togo the cable's first landing point along Africa's Atlantic coast. The system was designed to run from Portugal down Africa's western coast, with landing points including Togo, Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa.
Why Togo mattered
Togo is not Africa's largest economy, nor does it have the technology ecosystem of Nigeria, South Africa or Kenya.
Yet its geographical position and investment in digital infrastructure made it strategically important.
The Equiano cable effectively placed Togo on a major new digital route between Europe and Africa.
That matters because the modern economy increasingly depends on the ability to move enormous quantities of data quickly and reliably.
A startup serving customers in Europe needs connectivity.
A bank processing international transactions needs connectivity.
A cloud-computing company needs connectivity.
A filmmaker uploading high-resolution video needs connectivity.
A government delivering digital services needs connectivity.
And an AI company training or deploying increasingly data-intensive systems needs connectivity.
The infrastructure underneath all of this is easy to overlook precisely because users rarely see it.
The cable simply sits on the ocean floor.
But its economic consequences can reach far beyond the beach where it comes ashore.
Equiano was not simply another internet cable
Google described Equiano as its first subsea cable to connect Africa's Atlantic coast from Europe through a series of landing points.
The cable was named after Olaudah Equiano, the Nigerian-born writer and abolitionist.
Google said the system would carry approximately 20 times more network capacity than the previous cable serving the region. It was also designed to improve network resilience and provide capacity that could be used by other telecommunications partners.
That last point is particularly important.
Digital infrastructure creates the greatest economic value when it does not remain an isolated corporate asset.
Google partnered with organisations including Société d'Infrastructures Numériques (SIN) and CSquared to help extend Equiano's capacity to businesses and end users in Togo and beyond.
In other words, the cable's significance was not simply that Google could move its own data faster.
The larger opportunity was creating infrastructure that could support an entire digital ecosystem.
The economic promise was substantial
Before Equiano arrived, Togo's internet infrastructure faced the same fundamental challenge experienced across much of Africa: international connectivity could be expensive, capacity could be constrained and the quality of access could limit how much businesses and consumers could do online.
Google commissioned an economic impact assessment by Africa Practice and Genesis Analytics around the project.
The assessment projected that Equiano could help increase average internet speeds in Togo from around 10 Mbps in 2021 to 21 Mbps by 2025.
It also projected a 14% reduction in retail internet prices over the same period.
Perhaps most strikingly, the assessment estimated that improved connectivity could contribute indirectly to the creation of approximately 37,000 jobs in Togo between 2022 and 2025, through growth in the digital economy and related sectors.
These figures should be understood as projections rather than guaranteed outcomes.
A subsea cable does not automatically create thousands of jobs.
The cable creates capacity.
Governments, telecom operators, businesses, entrepreneurs and consumers must then turn that capacity into economic activity.
That distinction is crucial.
Infrastructure creates the possibility. Entrepreneurs create the value.
This is where the story becomes particularly relevant to the startup ecosystem.
Imagine a Togolese entrepreneur building a software company.
Before better connectivity, the company might face higher bandwidth costs, slower international connections or limitations when serving customers outside the country.
With better international infrastructure, those constraints can become less severe.
The same applies to a fintech company processing transactions, an outsourcing business providing services to foreign clients, a creative studio producing video content, or an online education company serving customers across Africa.
Better connectivity can reduce the friction between where a company is located and where its customers are located.
That is one of the most important characteristics of the digital economy.
A company in Lomé does not necessarily need its customers to be in Lomé.
Its market can be Lagos, Accra, London, Paris, Johannesburg or New York.
The infrastructure connecting those markets therefore becomes part of the startup ecosystem.
Togo's digital strategy was already evolving
Equiano did not arrive in a vacuum.
Togo had been pursuing a broader digital transformation strategy, seeking to expand connectivity and make technology a larger part of its economy.
This is important because subsea infrastructure works best when it connects to other layers of infrastructure.
A cable landing station alone does not create a digital economy.
It needs terrestrial fibre.
It needs data centres.
It needs mobile networks.
It needs reliable electricity.
It needs affordable devices.
It needs digital skills.
It needs businesses capable of using the infrastructure.
And it needs regulation that encourages investment and competition.
The World Bank has similarly highlighted the importance of expanding digital connectivity in Togo and the potential economic benefits associated with those investments.
This is why the Equiano landing should be viewed as one piece of a much larger infrastructure puzzle.
The lesson for Africa's startup economy
Africa's startup story is often told through funding rounds.
A fintech raises $50 million.
A logistics company reaches a $1 billion valuation.
An AI startup launches in Lagos.
A Kenyan technology company expands into Europe.
Those stories matter.
But underneath them is another story: infrastructure.
Startups cannot scale on venture capital alone.
They need reliable electricity.
They need payment infrastructure.
They need telecommunications.
They need cloud computing.
They need data centres.
They need roads and logistics.
And increasingly, they need enormous amounts of affordable bandwidth.
Google itself has linked infrastructure investment to Africa's entrepreneurial ecosystem. The company has said its broader African strategy includes digital infrastructure, entrepreneurship, skills development and technological innovation.
That connection is important.
The startup economy and infrastructure economy are not separate industries.
They are increasingly the same story viewed from different angles.
And then came the 2024 cable disruption
One of the strongest demonstrations of Equiano's value came two years after its arrival.
In March 2024, damage to multiple subsea cables caused significant internet disruptions along parts of the West African coast.
Google later said Equiano remained operational during the disruption, helping protect Google Cloud customers' traffic and providing additional resilience as other networks experienced outages.
That episode exposed something that consumers normally never think about.
The internet is not actually "in the cloud."
It is dependent on physical infrastructure.
Data centres are physical.
Fibre networks are physical.
Mobile towers are physical.
And international internet connectivity depends heavily on cables running across the seabed.
When those physical systems fail, the supposedly borderless digital economy can suddenly become very tangible.
Africa's digital future will require more cables — not fewer
As artificial intelligence, cloud computing, video streaming, digital payments and remote work expand, demand for international bandwidth is likely to keep increasing.
The next generation of African businesses will probably consume vastly more data than the previous generation.
An AI startup may need to exchange enormous datasets.
A video platform may deliver millions of hours of content.
A financial platform may process transactions continuously.
A cloud provider may serve customers across several countries.
All of these activities depend on infrastructure that most users never see.
This makes subsea cables a strategic economic asset.
And it also raises an important policy question for African governments:
Who controls the infrastructure on which the digital economy depends?
Connectivity is becoming an economic sovereignty issue
For African countries, the conversation cannot stop at getting connected.
The bigger question is what happens after connectivity arrives.
Can local companies access the capacity at competitive prices?
Can African businesses build services on top of it?
Are there enough local data centres?
Is electricity reliable enough to support digital infrastructure?
Are local engineers being trained to maintain and expand the network?
Can African governments protect critical digital infrastructure from disruption?
And can the economic value generated by global technology companies translate into sustainable local investment?
These questions matter because connectivity is increasingly equivalent to economic access.
A country with world-class digital infrastructure can potentially participate in global markets without having to physically export every service.
A programmer can sell software.
A designer can work for an overseas company.
A filmmaker can distribute content internationally.
A fintech can process cross-border payments.
A startup can build a global customer base from an African city.
But without reliable connectivity, those opportunities become considerably harder.
From Togo to the rest of Africa
Equiano's journey did not end in Togo.
Google subsequently announced landings in Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa, creating a network running down Africa's western coast.
That regional architecture matters.
Africa's digital economy will not be built country by country in isolation.
Businesses increasingly operate across borders.
Customers move across borders.
Capital moves across borders.
Data moves across borders.
And infrastructure must increasingly do the same.
Togo's position as Equiano's first African landing therefore offered something larger than a technological upgrade.
It gave the country a chance to position itself within the physical architecture of Africa's digital future.
The real story beneath the cable
The Equiano story is ultimately not about a cable.
It is about what happens when invisible infrastructure meets entrepreneurial ambition.
The cable itself does not create a startup.
It does not train a programmer.
It does not launch a fintech.
It does not create a filmmaker.
But it can remove one of the constraints that prevents those people and companies from participating fully in the global economy.
That is why the most important technology stories are sometimes buried beneath the ocean.
While headlines focus on artificial intelligence, billion-dollar startups and the latest applications, an enormous part of Africa's digital future is being determined by fibre running thousands of metres beneath the Atlantic.
Togo understood something important: before you can build a digital economy, you have to build the infrastructure that allows it to exist.
And in 2022, when Google's Equiano reached Lomé, a small West African country found itself at the beginning of one of the continent's most important digital highways.
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