Meta's subsea cable to land in two Nigerian locations

AFRICAN BUSINESS AND ECONOMYOctober 13, 2023 at 12:26 PM UTC

The 2Africa subsea cable project, backed by Meta and spanning 45,000km, is set to land in two Nigerian locations in November. This extensive deep-sea cable endeavor, which will encircle the African continent upon completion, is expected to have landing points in Lagos and Kwa Ibo, a town along the river in Nigeria's southeast.

The consortium spearheading 2Africa includes Meta, China Mobile International, and various telecom companies. It aims to create the world's longest undersea cable primarily serving Africa, making it the largest undersea cable project in the cost-effective capacity category, thanks to innovative technology from Alcatel Submarine Networks.

Starting from Genoa in northern Italy, 2Africa traverses Africa with landings in Spain, France, the Middle East, Pakistan, and India, concluding near the southern tip of the UK.

Key Takeaways

Africa's big economies have a fast-growing population of internet users, with growth fuelled by rapidly expanding mobile broadband networks and affordable smartphones. But the continent still lags behind the rest of the world in internet connectivity. While used international bandwidth has significantly increased in Africa in recent years, the region has been plagued by submarine cable faults. To remedy this, at least eight new cables are planned to help reduce the impact of these faults and increase supply, of which Meta's 2Africa is one. The subsea cable infrastructure will directly connect countries around the African coast to Europe and the Middle East. Subsea cables are the backbone of the internet, carrying 99% of the world's data traffic.