Africa has over 1.3 billion people but with only a quarter of those connected to the internet. In fact, it is the least connected continent with almost 1 billion people not connected to the internet leaving room for investment in its internet infrastructure.
Facebook has partnered with African and global partners to build a subsea cable to serve not just Africa but the Middle East as well called 2Africa. The $1 billion project is spearheaded by not just Facebook but China Mobile, Orange, Vodafone, MTN GlobalConnect, STC, Telecom Egypt, and WIOCC and will be built by Alcatel Submarine Networks.
The 37,000 KM 2Africa undersea cable will connect over 23 countries across the vast African coastline, the Middle East, and Europe and is said to provide nearly 3 times the capacity current cables are serving Africa with a designed capacity of 180Tbps. The project is expected to be operational by 2023/4.
“This expanded capacity with facilitate a healthy internet ecosystem by enabling greatly improved accessibility for people and businesses alike,” says Facebook.
Facebook adds that in countries where the 2Africa cable lands, service providers will obtain capacity from carrier-neutral data centers and open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis.
The 2Africa cable forms part of Facebook’s partnership with the internet society to build internet exchanges, provide capacity building and equipment in Africa. We’ve also seen almost similar partnerships in the past here in Uganda, where the social networking giant partnered with Airtel to layover 800km of fiber to increase connectivity on top of other countries like South Africa, Nigeria, and the DRC.
