When a Houthi missile struck the Rubymar cargo ship in the Red Sea in February 2024, its drifting anchor severed three subsea cables including Seacom, causing a prolonged outage that cut Seacom's contribution to Remgro's headline earnings by ~78%. Seacom's Richard Schumacher shares the key lesson: redundancy at every layer — first mile, middle mile, and last mile — is not optional. While Africa's subsea cable landing points have improved, the middle-mile gap remains acute for landlocked countries. Ongoing geopolitical threats in the Red Sea and potential Bab-el-Mandeb closure continue to threaten east coast connectivity, though west coast cable rerouting has provided meaningful mitigation. The core takeaway for any network operator or enterprise: single points of failure are a serious business risk.
