The ship supporting the connected continent

A ship of the size of a football field, equipped with more than 50 engineers and technicians, is touring the oceans around Africa to keep the continent online.

It provides a vital service, as last year’s eclipse on the Internet showed when internet cables buried deep under the sea were damaged.

Millions from Lagos to Nairobi were immersed in digital darkness: the messages were collapsed and bank transactions failed. Leave the business and the people fighting.

It is Léon Thévenin who fixes the many damage to the cable. The ship, where a BBC team recently spent a week aboard off the shores of Ghana, performs this specialized repair work in the last 13 years

“Because of me, the sides remain connected,” says Shuru Arenors, a cable from South Africa, which has been working on the ship for more than a decade, “BBC tells.

“People have a job at home because I bring the main issue,” he says.

“You have characters who save lives – I’m a hero because I’m saving communication.”

His pride and passion reflect the mood of the qualified crew of Léon Thévenin, which stands on eight floors high and carries an assortment of equipment.

The Internet is a network of computer servers – to read this article, it is probably at least one of 600 optical cables worldwide to collect data to present them on your screen.

Most of these servers are in data centers outside Africa, and optical cables are moving along the ocean bottom, connecting them to coastal cities on the continent.

Data travel through thin fiberglass wires, often grouped in pairs and protected from different layers of plastic and copper, depending on how close the cables are to the shore.

“While the servers are not in the country, you need a connection. Cable passes from one country to next, connecting users to servers that store their data – whether they have access to Facebook or another online service,” says Benjamin Smith, the deputy chief of Léon Thévenin’s mission.

Underwater optical cables are designed to operate for 25 years with minimal maintenance, but when damaged, this is usually due to human activity.

“The cable usually does not break down on its own unless you are in an area where there are quite high currents and very sharp rocks,” says Charles Hynd, who drives the vehicle on the ship (ROV).

“But most of the time, people anchor where the fishing trawlers should not be scraped around the seafloor, so we would usually see trapping scars.”

Smith also says that natural disasters cause damage to cables, especially in parts of the continent with extreme weather conditions. It sets an example of the seas off the coast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Congo River is emptied in the Atlantic.

“In the Congo Canyon, where they have a lot of rainfall and tide, it can create currents to damage the cable,” he says.

Intentional sabotage is difficult to identify – but the crew of Léon Thévenin says he has not seen any obvious evidence of it.

A year ago, three critical cables in the Red Sea – Seacom, AAE -1 and EIG – were torn apart as an anchor of the shipConnection to millions in East Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique.

Just a month later, in March 2024, a separate set of vacations in WACS, ACE, SAT-3 and Mainone cables off the shores of West Africa cause heavy internet eclipses through Nigeria, Ghana, Kot D’Ivoire and LiberiaS

Everything that required the Internet to function was feeling the tension as repairs stretched for weeks.

Then in May, another failure: Seacom and Eassy cables suffered damage off the coast of South Africa, hitting the connectivity again in many East African countries.

Such malfunctions are detected by testing electricity and signal power transmitted through cables.

“There may be 3000 volts in cable and suddenly it falls to 50 volts, it means there is a problem,” explains Like Walerand, the chief of the ship’s mission.

There are local teams with capacity to deal with shallow waters, but if they are found outside a depth of 50 m (164 feet), the ship is called into action. Its crew can fix cables deeper than 5000 m below sea level.

The repair, witnessing the BBC OFF Ghana, took a week to handle it, but most Internet users did not notice that traffic was redirected to another cable.

The nature of each repair depends on the part of the cable that is damaged.

If the fiberglass in the nucleus breaks, it means that the data cannot travel on the net and must be sent to another cable.

But some African countries have only one cable that serves them. This means that the cable damaged in this way leaves the affected area without the Internet.

At other times, the protective layers of the fiber may be damaged, which means that data transmission is still happening, but with less efficiency. In both cases, the crew must find the exact location of the damage.

In the case of broken fiberglass, a slight signal is sent through the cable and through the point of reflection the crew can determine where the break is.

When the problem is with the insulation of the cable – known as the “failure of the shunt” – it becomes more complicated and an electrical signal must be sent along the cable to follow physically where it is lost.

After narrowing the possible error area, the operation moves to the ROV team.

Built as a bulldozer, ROV weighing 9.5 tonnes, it descends under water from the ship, where it heads to the ocean floor.

About five crew members work with a crane operator to unfold it – after being released from his harness called umbilical cord, he sails gracefully.

“It doesn’t sink,” says G -H Hild, explaining how he uses four horizontal and vertical pushers to move in any direction.

The three ROV cameras allow the team on board to look for the exact location of errors as it moves to the ocean bed.

Once found, ROV cuts the affected part, using both hands, then ties it with a rope, which drags back to the ship.

Here the defective section is isolated and replaced by suggestion and joining a new cable – a process that looks like welding and which took 24 hours in the case of the operation, a witness to the BBC.

The cable was then carefully lowered back to the ocean bed and then ROV made one last trip to check that it was well placed and take coordinates so that cards could be updated.

When a warning around a damaged cable is obtained, the Léon Thévenin crew is ready to sail within 24 hours. However, their response time depends on several factors: the location of the ship, the availability of spare cables and bureaucratic challenges.

“Permits can take weeks. Sometimes we sail to the affected side and wait ashore until the documents are arranged,” says G -n Wallend.

On average, the crew spends more than six months at sea.

“It’s part of the job,” says Captain Thomas Kehek.

But speaking with crew members between tasks, it is difficult to ignore their personal victims.

They are extracted from different origin and nationalities: French, South African, Filipino, Malagassi and others.

Adrian Morgan, the chief steward of the South Africa ship, missed five consecutive wedding anniversaries.

“I wanted to give up. It was difficult to stay away from my family, but my wife encouraged me. I do it for them,” he says.

Another South African, a supporter of NEEL GOYAN, is worried that he may miss his son’s wedding in a few weeks if the ship is called to another mission.

“I heard we could go to Durban (in South Africa). My son will be very sad because there is no mom,” says G -n Goeman, who lost his wife three years ago.

“But I’ve been retreating for six months,” he adds with a smile.

Despite the emotional fee, there is companionship on board.

When out of duty, crew members or play video games in the salon, or share dishes in the ship’s porridge hall.

Entering their profession is as diverse as their origin.

While G -Goeeman followed his father’s footsteps, the chief Cook, the South African Remario Smith, went to the sea to escape the life of crime.

“I was involved in bands when I was more than a junior,” says G -n -Smith, “My child was born when I was 25 years old and knew I had to change my life.”

Like others on board, he appreciates the role that the ship plays on the continent.

“We are the connection between Africa and the world,” says Chief Engineer Feron Hartenberg.

Additional reporting from Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah.