Investors in West Africa agreed to finance a deal for a $240 million fibre-optic cable to provide faster internet services and telecoms in the region.

Nigeria-based Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), one of the largest investors in the deal, said in a statement the 7,000 km Main-One Cable System will run from Portugal to Nigeria with branches to the Canary Islands, Morocco, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Ghana.

The cable will deliver 1.92Tbps of bandwidth, ten times the available capacity of the existing fibre optic cable.

The AFC, backed by Nigeria's central bank and some of its most influential business leaders, was set up in early 2007 as a regional investment bank to spearhead the funding of infrastructure projects around the continent.