This archive report was first published on 14 May 2020.
On May 14, 2020, a consortium of telecoms and internet giants announced a groundbreaking project to lay a subsea cable around Africa, aiming to boost internet access to the underserved continent.
The consortium, comprising China Mobile International, Facebook, Orange, and Vodafone, will lay a 37,000-kilometre-long cable that will make landfall in 16 countries in Africa and the Middle East.
According to the consortium, the cable is expected to go live in 2023/4, delivering more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa today.
The new cable will be one of the longest in the world, providing the continent with new high-speed links to Europe and the Middle East.
Using new technology that doubles the number of optical fibres, the cable will travel down the east coast of Africa and then up the west coast, connecting to Britain.
“2Africa will deliver much needed internet capacity and reliability across large parts of Africa, supplement the fast-growing capacity demand in the Middle East and underpin the further growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for hundreds of millions of people,” the consortium said.
