Northern Ghana Fiber Backbone and Access Networks Feasibility Study
October 28, 2026
- December 1, 2026
The Grantee invites submission of qualifications and proposal data (collectively referred to as the “Proposal”) from interested U.S. firms that are qualified on the basis of experience and capability to execute a feasibility study (“Study”) that would assess the viability of developing an aerially deployed open-access fiber backbone and associated access networks along existing electricity distribution infrastructure owned by the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (“NEDCo”) in northern Ghana (the “Project”). The Proposal submission deadline is December 1, 2026 at noon Eastern Time with a deadline for questions on November 13, 2026. The U.S. firm selected will be paid in U.S. dollars from a $660,000 grant to the Grantee from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
About the Grantee
CSquared Ghana is the local Ghanaian subsidiary of CSquared Link Holdings (Mauritius) Limited, (“CSquared”) a Mauritius-incorporated wholesale connectivity provider that leases capacity on metro fiber networks to mobile network operators and internet service providers. Since spinning off from Google as an independent company in 2017, CSquared has built and currently operates over 5,000 km of metro fiber across sub-Saharan Africa, including in Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, and Liberia. CSquared has operated in Ghana since 2015 and through CSquared Ghana, maintains fiber metro networks in Accra, Tema, Kasoa, Kumasi, and Takoradi. CSquared Ghana also has experience working with stakeholders in the power sector, including GridCo, Ghana’s transmission company, and has deployed over 850 kilometers of backbone fiber along their existing infrastructure.
Project Background
CSquared Ghana is seeking to address limited broadband access in northern Ghana through a large expansion of its fiber backbone and access infrastructure in Ghana in partnership with NEDCo. NEDCo is an electricity distribution utility company in Ghana, organized as a subsidiary of the state-owned Volta River Authority. The company is the sole distributor of electricity for over 60 percent of Ghana’s total land area and has small cross-border power transmission connections to Togo and Burkina Faso. CSquared Ghana seeks to deploy its open-access fiber network across NEDCo’s existing electricity distribution network by stringing fiber optic cable along transmission towers and poles.
About the Study
The Study would assess the commercial feasibility of developing an aerially deployed open-access fiber backbone and associated access networks along NEDCo’s electricity distribution infrastructure. In particular, the Study would focus on the commercial opportunity for serving the broader addressable wholesale market within NEDCo’s coverage area in Ghana. The Study would include an infrastructure assessment to assess the readiness of NEDCo’s infrastructure to support fiber backbone; a commercial analysis to quantify demand, products, and pricing; an economic analysis of Project lifecycle costs and revenue forecasts; and a financing plan. Additionally, the Study would include a legal and regulatory analysis, a development impact assessment, a preliminary environmental and social impact assessment, a U.S. sources of supply analysis, and a Project implementation plan. The study shall evaluate the technical and economic viability of leveraging existing physical and passive assets to design a high availability, secure, resilient, and cost-effective telecommunications network architecture. This architecture shall be engineered to optimize NEDCo’s operational efficiencies by establishing robust interconnectivity across all critical operational nodes, including but not limited to substations, regional and district offices, service centers, data centers, and key strategic assets.
The study shall also undertake a comprehensive demand forecast and bandwidth capacity assessment to quantify the telecommunications requirements for NEDCo’s current and future smart meter rollouts. Furthermore, the Study will formulate a technical framework evaluating how the proposed optical fiber backbone can deliver a secure, reliable, and scalable communication channel to support advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and auxiliary smartgrid applications.
