The Medusa cable system connects five EU countries Cyprus, France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain with Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia via submarine cables manufactured by Alcatel Submarine Networks.
© picture alliance / abaca | ABACA
The EU is promoting large-scale cables to North Africa that promise local development and geoeconomic alignment. Philipp Wagner and Etienne Höra argue that these promises are not self-evident: Fulfilling them requires analyses of political and economic corollaries to avoid negative side-effects.
The Medusa cable system connects five EU countries Cyprus, France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain with Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia via submarine cables manufactured by Alcatel Submarine Networks.
© picture alliance / abaca | ABACA
Cables and wires – visible in landscapes and cities or buried in oceans and underground – structure our daily economic activities and create transnational linkages. However, beyond the physical cable lies an immaterial dimension. In an age of geoeconomic competition, large-scale electricity and internet cables as mega-projects have become crucial elements to the EU’s ambitions in its neighbourhood.
Various North African governments have increased their entanglements with China, Russia, and Gulf countries while simultaneously pursuing joint infrastructure projects with their counterparts from the EU. The region is not only geographically close to Europe, but is also seen as a strategic bridge to the African continent. Amid increasing geopolitical tensions in the Mediterranean, EU-promoted infrastructures such as undersea cables have therefore become a tool to anchor European presence in North Africa.
In this Spotlight, we show that EU-promoted connective infrastructures in the form of electricity and internet cables to North Africa are heavily loaded with expectations for geoeconomic alignment and economic development. However, these aspirations neglect the politics of technologies and infrastructures. Cables can be used as tools for different political purposes with contingent outcomes. Realizing their promises requires a deeper analysis of local political economies that go beyond material infrastructures. Even if such infrastructure connections are realized, the expectations associated with them do not unfold automatically. We illustrate these dynamics with the planned Medusa internet cable and the ELMED electricity interconnector.
European actors promote a variety of cable infrastructures to link up with the African continent. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of trans-Mediterranean cable infrastructures is not new. Previous generations of these cables have had mixed success. While two prominent initiatives for electricity integration, Med-Ring and Desertec, have failed due to their overambitious and partly extractivist character, as well as conflicts in the region, other, less visible cable projects have already materialized. For instance, various transregional internet cables or the Morocco-Spain electricity interconnector are embedded in daily usage.
If these cables remain partly hidden and unknown to the larger public, this is not only due to their technical nature. As Nicole Starosielski explains in her book “The Undersea Network”, undersea cables are largely (rendered) invisible, but are significant elements of global economic connections and networks. The cables not only enable transregional electricity or data flows, but also transport hopes for liberal norms and geopolitical alignment. In different EU policy discourses, we have observed that these norms and expectations include optimism for economic development and private sector participation in North Africa. It is expected that through joint cables, “all good things go together”. In this sense, geoeconomic and development promises towards the Southern Mediterranean give new meanings to hidden cable infrastructure.
The EU’s Global Gateway initiative, a large-scale infrastructure investment plan often presented as the bloc’s response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, serves as a conceptual frame for these projects. More recently, hopes of security and strategic autonomy have been added to the mix. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and even more so amid increasing tensions between European governments and the US administration, the EU seeks to ensure its autonomy at the intersection of security, energy, and trade. In an increasingly multipolar world order, cables with fixed geographical landing points on two continents are meant to demonstrate stability and connection. At the same time, it should be considered that North African states could develop different visions of connected futures and use these technologies as tools for their own political projects, which are not always aligned with those of the EU.
Medusa is a submarine internet cable project connecting the Northern and the Southern shores of the Mediterranean, with a planned total length of over 7,100 km. It involves a coalition of public and private actors on both shores, including developer AFR-IX telecom, manufacturer Alcatel Submarine Networks, and financing from the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) under the Global Gateway.
The project has multiple objectives according to the EIB, including creating opportunities for “participating in the Information Society”, connecting research facilities, and offering local public administrations “secured and reliable connectivity”. More broadly, the EIB states that the project “contributes to inclusive and sustainable economic growth, favours gender equality and women’s advancement in the economy, and increases productivity.” According to then-EIB president Werner Hoyer, the project represents “a bridge of cooperation and shared vision between North Africa and the EU”, fostering “collaboration across borders” and “opportunities for all”.
Beyond physical connectivity, digital access involves “access to equipment”, the “use of ICTs [Information and Communication Technologies] by individuals and groups”, “the efficiency of use”, and “the modalities of learning in a knowledge economy”. In all of these dimensions, new infrastructure in Northern Africa meets existing inequalities, both between different social groups and between regions. For instance, in Tunisia, only 30 per cent of rural households were connected to the internet in 2023, as opposed to 70 per cent in urban areas. Even for those people and regions that are connected, a growing skill gap deepens the country’s digital divide, including a growing illiteracy rate which disproportionately affects young people and rural populations, and a widespread lack of basic digital competencies, such as the ability to safely navigate online content beyond social media and to identify disinformation online. Longitudinal research on Tunisia and Morocco has shown that 80 per cent of the countries’ populations remain fully or partially excluded from digitalisation and that there is a high correlation with existing socio-economic, gender, age, and regional inequalities. Paradoxically, increased connectivity for some can therefore lead to an increased sense of marginalisation for those who do not benefit to the same degree, further reinforcing societal divisions.
Another telling example for connective cable projects is the ELMED electricity interconnector which is designed to be built between northeastern Tunisia and Sicily with a length of 220 km. While the initiative dates to the early 2000s, it is only in recent years that the concrete roll-out and funding of the project has been advanced. The interconnector’s designation as a “project of common interest” by the European Commission is another illustration of its geostrategic importance. The infrastructure’s main technical ambition is to enhance grid stability in Tunisia and Italy through possible electricity flows in both directions. Beyond that, it is also intended to enable Tunisia’s energy transition and prepare potential electricity exports from the South to the North.
The project is planned despite a wide range of tensions between the Tunisian government and European actors, such as Tunisia’s rejection of IMF programmes. In addition, the Tunisian government has expressed ambitions to increase its cooperation with Russia and China, also for infrastructure development. In this sense, ELMED is about more than electricity exchanges: It is also about maintaining dialogue between political and business stakeholders from both sides of the Mediterranean. European actors hence frame the project as a manifestation of (seemingly) common politico-economic interests. However, it does not prevent the Tunisian state from acting opportunistically and nevertheless taking other geopolitical directions. Moreover, Tunisian trade unions and environmental activists have expressed their resistance to the cable since they fear further privatization and commodification of the national energy sector. This concern seems justified, especially since local economic impacts and possible downstream uses are hardly discussed in a transparent manner.
Sometimes, cables are more than just copper, glass fibre, and plastic. There is a potential for joint ownership of cables between both shores of the Mediterranean. If the projects are implemented in a transparent and accountable manner, they can address disparities which concern both sides, and open up spaces for long-term cooperation.
Despite the shiny geoeconomic promises of joint cables, there remain challenges and unresolved questions. First, the material implementation of construction works remains largely uncertain since increasing budgetary restrictions lead to bottlenecks in the funding of large-scale infrastructures. Second, there is no guarantee that transregional infrastructures have enough potential to actually (re-) shape the rapidly changing geopolitical orientations of different North African and European governments. By themselves, joint cable initiatives do not prevent governments from engaging in opportunistic foreign policy instead of stabilizing alignment with the EU. Such projects can even empower North African governments by strengthening their economic autonomy. Third, cables are not only geopolitical tools for connection, but can also be exposed to physical threat and sabotage. As it is the case in the Baltic Sea, there is a material dimension of security for undersea infrastructures.
As illustrated above, trans-Mediterranean cable infrastructures bear the risk of becoming a project for elite-centric connectivity, excluding large parts of societies from their material benefits. There is no automatism for far-reaching “win-win” futures through joint cables. As they are invested with hopes far beyond infrastructure, there is a substantial risk of overburdening these projects with promises they cannot fulfil. The EU’s Global Gateway seeks to create horizontal partnerships. This requires deeply analysing different political and socio-economic effects, not only on the governmental level, but also on local realities, including NGOs, local communities, and small businesses. Inclusive decision-making processes are thus needed to ensure that benefits are actually created on both shores and within different social categories.
Philipp Wagner is a doctoral researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute Freiburg working on energy politics and infrastructures. Etienne Höra works on trade policy and geoeconomics at Bertelsmann Stiftung. He also serves as president of Polis180 e. V.
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