Any country’s development is based on a number of interconnected factors working together. From education, job creation and industrial strength, social welfare and the development of society to the economy, scientific research and innovation, culture and environmental sustainability, to name just a few…

But for decades now, technology and the development of our societies have been very closely related indeed. In fact, we can’t really talk about genuine prosperity anymore without linking it to connectivity. The UN is working to ensure that developing nations have a “pathway” within their technological capabilities to avoid total dependence on importing and exporting basic goods

With this framework in mind, the enormous importance of fibre optic as a facilitator of technological development opportunities is clear to see. In this field, the most ambitious project to date on a global level is 2Africa, the longest underwater cable in the world, which has been designed to lead to an unprecedented leap in terms of connectivity, uniting Europe, Asia and Africa.

4G and 5G, drivers of change in connectivity in nineteen African nations

You don’t have to be particularly tech-savvy to see the importance and benefits of having an internet connection that is reliable in terms of signal stability. And if there aren’t the bandwidth capacities to meet even current information transmission standards, there can be no talk of improving connectivity even further. That’s the reality facing many African countries. And that’s why fibre optic can represent such drastic change.

2Africa is one of the most ambitious projects in the field of connectivity over the past ten years. It involves laying 45,000km of underwater fibre optic cable to link different stations and nodes across Europe, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, India, Pakistan and up to nineteen different countries on the African continent. This will allow the 4G and 5G networks to be rolled out, providing a number of guarantees – especially via the latter network, given the typical standard continues to be 2G and 3G coverage –, as well as making fixed broadband access a reality for hundreds of millions of people, governments and businesses.

More capacity than every fibre optic cable in service today

2Africa will connect nineteen different African countries and thirty-three in total. The system has four “landing points” or connections to the mainland in South Africa and two in Mozambique, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Egypt respectively, totalling some twenty-seven nodes in Africa alone and forty-six globally.

These figures translate into delivering more combined capacity than what is provided by all the underwater cables that serve Africa today, with potential connectivity capacities of up to 180Tbps in key parts of the continental grid.

What makes this project different?

One of the most important features of the 2Africa cable is that it has been designed to achieve optimum performance levels, despite the resistance created by the underwater terrain on the continental coastline. In light of this, some companies involved in the project will provide new trans-Egypt land-crossing routes, with the option of having an uninterrupted optical path between East Africa and Europe. This highly ambitious project, which was first officially announced back in September 2020, is moving into the final third of its implementation phase, and those responsible are confident it will be fully operational by late 2023 or early 2024 at the latest.