Facebook and a team of African and global telecoms companies will add four more countries to its world’s largest subsea cable project, widening the build project in Africa earlier than planned.

August 16, 2021

Facebook has announced that it would extend to four more branches the “most comprehensive” subsea cable to serve the African continent and Middle East region. The consortium of the project, called 2Africa, comprises South Africa’s MTN GlobalConnect, Facebook, Mauritius-based infrastructure provider WIOCC, China Mobile International, France’s Orange SA, Saudi Arabia’s stc, Telecom Egypt and Vodafone — as reported in a leading daily.

Internet connectivity will be expanded to Seychelles, the Comoros Islands, Angola and bring a new landing point to south-east Nigeria. This is in addition to the recently announced extension to the Canary Islands, the companies said.

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Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) has been selected to deploy the new “branches”, which will increase the number of 2Africa landings to 35 in 26 countries, further improving connectivity into and around Africa, they added.

The consortium launched the cable, which is expected to go live in late 2023, in May 2020 to connect those countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

Subsea cables form the backbone of the internet, carrying 99 percent of the world’s data traffic.

Africa’s big economies have a large and fast-growing population of internet users, with growth in internet use fuelled by rapidly expanding mobile broadband networks and more affordable phones.

Also Read: Google and Facebook to Build 12000 Kilometers Asian Apricot Subsea Cable System.

However, with a population of just above 1.3 billion, Africa is still a laggard in internet connectivity, with average mobile internet users at around 26 percent against a world average of 51 percent.

The companies said 2Africa will be the largest subsea cable project in the world.