Sudan

Gateway to the Red Sea

Port Sudan is Sudan's sole documented submarine cable landing point, sitting at the junction of the Red Sea and the country's narrow coastal strip. That geography is both an asset and a constraint. The Red Sea is one of the world's busiest corridors for submarine cable traffic, carrying data between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and cables transiting or terminating along its shores benefit from proximity to those high-capacity trunk routes. Sudan's position on the western Red Sea coast gives it a natural entry point into that corridor.

The Cable Mix

Two active cables serve Sudan: EASSy (Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System) and SAS-1, both landing at Port Sudan.

EASSy is the more prominent of the two, a 10,000-kilometre system that runs along the eastern coast of Africa and connects a broad range of countries across the region. Its reach makes it a meaningful link between Sudan and the wider Eastern African cable ecosystem, providing onward connectivity to landing points that in turn connect to global routes.

SAS-1 is also active at Port Sudan, though its length and ready-for-service date are not documented in the current register. Its presence nonetheless adds a second physical cable path into the country, which matters for basic resilience.

Capacity and Resilience

With two cables documented, Sudan is not entirely dependent on a single system — a meaningful distinction from countries served by only one route. A fault on either cable does not necessarily isolate the country, provided the remaining system has sufficient capacity to carry traffic in the interim. That said, two cables landing at the same point share a degree of common risk: any event affecting the Port Sudan landing station, or the immediate marine approaches to it, could affect both simultaneously. True resilience generally requires geographic diversity in landing locations, and on the current evidence Sudan's submarine connectivity is concentrated at a single coastal node.

Geographic Considerations

The Red Sea corridor is subject to its own infrastructure pressures. Shipping traffic is dense, seabed conditions vary, and cable repairs in the region can involve complex coordination. Sudan's reliance on Port Sudan as its only landing point means that the health of that single facility and its surrounding marine environment carries outsized importance for national connectivity. Terrestrial infrastructure linking Port Sudan to Khartoum and onward to the rest of the country adds a further layer of dependency that sits outside the submarine network itself.