EllaLink and MTNIMA Land New Subsea Cable Branch in Nouadhibou

By Harry Baldock, Total Telecom
May 5, 2026

EllaLink and the Islamic Republic of Mauritania today marked the successful landing of a new subsea cable in Nouadhibou, giving the country a second direct, diverse and secure connection to European and international digital hubs. The landing is a defining step for Mauritania’s digital sovereignty, resilience and long-term competitiveness.

The new branch extends more than 670 km from the main EllaLink trunk to the new Nouadhibou cable landing station. Equipped with two fibre pairs and state-of-the-art optical technology, it delivers multi-gigabit connectivity from day one, scalable to multi-terabit capacity, with significant headroom to accommodate decades of traffic growth.

The project is co-funded by the Mauritanian State and the European Union through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), reinforcing Europe’s commitment to secure, high-capacity digital links with Mauritania and the wider Atlantic region. In Nouadhibou, EllaLink has built a new neutral cable landing station, enabling national operators to access the infrastructure via two diverse routes.

By providing Mauritanian operators, public institutions and innovators with a trusted, direct, low-latency path to European cloud, AI and data services, the new route strengthens national digital security and serves as a key enabler for the development of strategic sectors including e-government, education, health, agriculture, transport and energy.

“I am here today, acting on the directives of the President of the Republic, His Excellency Mr Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, and under the supervision of the Prime Minister, Mr Moctar Ould Djay, to accompany the progress of Mauritania’s project to connect to a second international submarine telecommunications cable. We gather today at a decisive moment in this journey, with the landing of the cable on the coastline of the city of Nouadhibou, having completed its route through the ocean floor and been connected to the landing station via a state-of-the-art segment,” said Ahmed Salem Bede, Minister of Digital Transformation and Modernisation of Administration of Mauritania. “Through this connection, Mauritania strengthens its capacity to secure its communications with the world, diversifies its international access points and guarantees the stability of its digital services. We are moving from the status of a mere recipient to that of a full participant in the global telecommunications architecture,” he said. “This choice was made with full awareness of the scale of the challenges, and with a firm commitment to preserve national digital sovereignty and protect its strategic pillars,” he concluded.

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