The $10bn undersea dream to link Europe and Africa

The European Union has now promised to contribute to the project's financing, having kept its distance from the proposals for decades, due to what it called technical difficulties and the dangers of illegal migration.

There are undoubtedly complexities with an old idea intended to provide a better connection between two cultures as well as their economies, while there is also a history of disharmony and misunderstanding, not least colonialism.

But in a fast-changing world, the potential economic and strategic benefits on offer have made Europe more interested than ever in this mega-project. It will provide a new rapid route into Africa, helping both continents compete with both China and Russia.

With an expected international rush for African exports, a potential Mediterranean tunnel has become a major political advantage for Spain, which it can use to increase its own competitiveness when the time is right.

But Madrid is not the only European nation interested in such a link with Africa. During a dispute between Spain and Morocco between 2020 and 2021, Britain proposed an undersea tunnel between its territory in Gibraltar and the Moroccan city of Tangier.

It came as a reminder that the narrow waters near where two great continents meet are politically entangled. There are three jurisdictions: Moroccan, Spanish and British.

This requires securing political consensus between the three to build any tunnel, especially as Spain remains in a territorial dispute with the UK over the sovereignty of Gibraltar.

Morocco, meanwhile, wants Spain to return control of the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, which are on the southern shores of the Mediterranean in mainly Moroccan territory. These three cities – Gibraltar, Ceuta and Melilla – are remnants of the fall of the Andalusia State at the end of the 15th century.

Tripartite cooperation in a tangled political zone

Britain's exit from the European Union and its rapprochement with Morocco contributed to a breakthrough in Spanish-Moroccan relations.

There was a newfound understanding of the economic benefits on offer for Europe and Africa, in an atmosphere of mutual trust that cooperation could extend.

In 2019, the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Morocco signed a strategic partnership agreement that includes liberalising trade, deepening economic ties, facilitating mutual investments, developing security cooperation, human development and promoting English culture in Morocco.

Officials said Rabat is keen to develop its relations with Britain and Spain together and take advantage of its geographical location at the entrance to global trade between the Atlantic and Mediterranean, where the three countries meet.  

The state of diplomacy elsewhere in Europe is not so convivial. France, in particular, has colder relations, not least due to a rapprochement between Paris with Algeria, which competes with Morocco for regional and continental leadership.

France also tends to have a negative image in African societies, which makes the reputation of other European nations look more positive in comparison.

Breathing new life – and deep detail – into an old dream

In early February the prime ministers of Morocco and Spain – Pedro Sanchez and Aziz Akhannouch­ – announced an agreement in Rabat to revive proposals for the Mediterranean tunnel between their nations.

Struck in the Spanish high commission, hopes were once again high for the idea and a shared future for the two countries at the meeting, which featured 24 ministers from both governments.

The proposals were detailed. The Spanish budget for the current year allocated funds for updating engineering and technical studies related to the demarcation of the tunnel's passage line and its maritime depth.

This is being supervised by the Sociedad Española de Estudios para la Comunicación Fija a Través del Estrecho de Gibraltar (SECEGSA), and its counterpart, Société Nationale d'Etudes du Detroit de Gibraltar (SNED).

The German company Herrenknecht, a manufacturer of marine drilling equipment, is preparing technical specifications for the project, so that it can reach a depth of 300 meters to 470m below sea level.

The drilling will take place at the confluence of the waters of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, where wind speeds exceed 120 km/h in winter. The Eurasian and African tectonic plates converge there, making the region vulnerable to earthquakes.

The tunnel project is due to be located within a sea line between the Azores islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and the Strait of Gibraltar at the eastern entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.

Studies prepared by the Swiss institute ETH Zurich on the how to complete the tunnel include the engineering, geological and topographical aspects of what would be the first tunnel in history linking Africa and Europe.

A meeting of kings and the dawn of inter-continental dreams

The idea of connecting the two continents dates back to the meeting of the late King Hassan II and former King Juan Carlos during a summit in Fez in 1979.

At the time, they discussed the possibility of building a continental link between the two shores of the Mediterranean linking Europe to Africa.The ambition has lasted, despite periods of political deadlock in relations between the two countries for various reasons.

Last year, during the crisis between the two countries, King Mohammed VI and King Felipe VI intervened to improve relations between the governments and to revive strategic projects between the two kingdoms.

The tunnel's construction is expected to start before 2030 — if the political backing lasts — and engineers set course on what would become a technological breakthrough on a global scale.

A tunnel, not a bridge

Until 1990, the prevailing idea was to study the possibility of a suspension bridge over the Mediterranean, linking between Tangier and Tarifa and stretching for less than 20km at an altitude that would allow transcontinental ships to pass.

It was supposed to be similar to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay, California. But building a suspension bridge 900m above the sea in a high-wind zone is technically complicated.

Attention turned to the possibility of a tunnel after the challenges of construction were overcome elsewhere.

They included the Channel Tunnel between France and Britain — which is 50km, including 37km under the sea — and the Seikan Tunnel between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido in Japan at 53km, including 23km under the sea.

These feats of engineering made a tunnel look more feasible, and drilling under the sea, rather than building over it also addressed the great dangers of strong winds at the entrances of the Strait of Gibraltar, where 100,000 transcontinental ships sail annually, representing a quarter of world trade. 

From Malabata to Tarifa and beyond, via a high-speed rail link

The latest studies by SECEGSA indicate that the construction of the sea tunnel project will start from Punta Paloma in the city of Tarifa in the northern bank and end at the Gulf of Tangier in the Malabata area in the southern bank.

The length will be 38.5km, including 28km under the sea at a maximum depth of 475m. The closest distance between Spain and Morocco is only 14km away, allowing visibility from each bank of the other bank.

The underground tunnel will run 11km in both directions, to reach the high-speed train stations linking Tangier to the capital Rabat in one hour and 10 minutes, to Casablanca in two and a quarter hours, and to Marrakech which is 500km away.

According to the study, the tunnel will run inside Spanish territory and is due to be connected by high-speed trains to the capital Madrid and then to Barcelona and Paris. The undersea tunnel includes three tracks: two two-way rail tracks, with an undersea station for technical and emergency services.

The tunnel is expected to transport about 13 million people a year in the first phase, as well as about 13 million tons of cargo carried by freight trains.

The cost of the project, according to a 2018 study, is estimated to be about $10bn, but the figure may jump depending on the quality of the equipment and the hardness of the ground.

Spanish engineer Claudio Olalla, who served as a government consultant for the project and is a professor at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, said: "Linking the sea tunnel to Spain's and Morocco's high-speed rail network will be a strong incentive for the development of trade and tourism between the European and African continents and will help strengthen the economic partnership between the two countries." 

Trade between Morocco and Spain was estimated at €19bn in 2022, of which €11bn were Spanish exports and €8bn were Moroccan exports, accounting for half of Madrid's trade with Africa.

Spain's big bet on Africa

The construction of an undersea tunnel is part of a massive project in which Spain seeks to compete with international parties on the benefits of the Zone de Libre-Échange Continentale Africaine (ZLECAF), whose agreement has been signed and/or ratified so far by 44 countries to develop bilateral trade estimated at $3.5tn.

Reaching these numbers will require the development of a land transport network, especially high-speed trains, and a road transport network from the Mediterranean to Ivory Coast and then to Nigeria, Gabon and Congo in Africa.

There is international competition for the best trade ties with the continent. China offers infrastructure facilities to poor African countries in exchange for supply guarantees. European countries are keen to secure their access to the markets and raw materials their industries also depend upon.

Opening up ways to improve road and rail links will be an important part of this effort.

Super-fast rail network

In March, Marrakech hosted the 11th World Express Conference, with the participation of dozens of international companies specialised in the manufacture of high-speed trains — Chinese, French, German, Japanese, American, Korean, Spanish and Italian — in preparation for the announcement of a global tender for the construction of a new network of high-speed trains between Casablanca, Marrakech and Agadir at a cost of about $5bn.

This would expand the network of this type of super-fast, 320km per hour trains to a length of 800km and link it to the tunnel. It will extend south to the desert later, and then to Mauritania, Senegal and West Africa before 2040. 

Not long after that, it may be possible to cross under the Mediterranean by train, moving between continents in no more than half an hour, untroubled by the waves 300 meters above, where thousands of ships ply the traditional route across the Straits of Gibraltar.