Government of Sierra Leone has been making big moves to strengthen the country’s growing appetite for more internet connectivity.

The latest moves have seen the Minister of Communications Technology and Innovation travelling to Conakry Guinea meeting with her counterparts for collaborative talks over the weekend.

Speaking at the weekly government press briefing, Madam Salima Bah said: “Over the weekend I led a delegation of a sector players to Guinea, [the reason] is, we want to create an interconnection with them so if we are down we can get some bandwidth from them and the same goes vice versa, that’s when Guinea is down we can assist.”

Madam Bah also justified on why Guinea is a smart option for a plan they have chosen: “Why Guinea is important is because Guinea is one of our neighboring countries and this option is only possible with them. In addition, Guinea has six more options because of the multiple borders it shares with different countries. So whenever we are down, we can benefit from Guinea because they have multiple options.”

Minister Bah said her urgency stems forms part of the President’s passion to make sure everybody gets access to internet in the country.

“The President considers internet and mobile service as a basic human right, so we all take it very seriously,” Madam Bah said.

Moderator of the Press conference and Minister of Information, Chernor Bah, also re-emphasized the same point. “Internet is part of our daily existence; it is our bread and butter. If internet is shutdown, everybody will know simply because of how much we rely on it,” the Minister of Information said.

Sierra Leone has faced some internet outages at a national scale and international scale, Madam Bah said significant investment in the current internet infrastructure over the years meant that Sierra Leone is in prime position to deal with the problem swiftly.

Like so many countries, Sierra Leone relies on the ACE submarine cable which runs from Europe right down the West Coast of Africa, to South Africa.

The cable connects more than 455 million people in more than a dozen countries. Problems in the corridor can affect any other country along the line. Sierra Leone has only one Ace submarine cable, running from Paris, Lisbon right down to Cape Town.

Executive Director of Zoodlab, Mamoud Idris said Sierra Leone’s cable is ageing.

“This cable is getting old, it was laid in 2012 and we are having problems with it. The risk of the cable cutting is increasing, intentionally or unintentionally the cable is being cut.”

Idris said all the conversation right now is to make sure internet is available for everyone. Significant investment in the sector has seen mobile coverage in the country expand significantly to cover 96% of the population with over 5 million people owning a SIM card for mobile phones.

On the moves to find a quick fix on internet outages in the country, Madam Bah said the country is also working towards a having long term sustainable solution.

“Ultimately for true protection and to limit our vulnerability, we need two cables at any given time. The private sector is forming a consortium,  look at Meta 2 Africa cable. On the government level we are working with ECOWAS, they have a program to support countries with one undersea internet cable.”