The Gambia’s Internet Revolution: How Fiber, 5G, and Satellite Broadband Are Connecting a Nation
The Gambia has used the ACE submarine fiber-optic cable since 2011, but a 2022 ACE outage knocked the country offline for over eight hours and backup links via Senegal failed, prompting plans for a second submarine cable landing in Banjul under the World Bank-funded Western Africa Regional Digital Integration Program (WARDIP). Gamtel launched the National Broadband Network (NBN) backbone in 2019 with Huawei’s support to extend high-speed links across the country. An Internet Exchange Point (IXP) was established in 2014 to localize Gambian internet traffic, though its impact has been muted so far. QCell launched the country’s first 5G service