The West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (WATRA) is urging regional leaders to prioritize the protection of submarine cable infrastructure following widespread outages in March 2024. WATRA Executive Secretary Aliyu Yusuf Aboki highlighted that these disruptions, which paralyzed businesses, financial services, and public sectors across the region, proved that cable resilience is critical to economic stability rather than just a technical issue. Moving forward, WATRA aims to implement global recommendations for improved incident reporting, better access to repair resources, and increased network redundancy through enhanced cross-border cooperation.