The 2Africa subsea cable could significantly enhance South Africa’s internet connectivity and stimulate significant economic growth once it is completed later this year, according to David Eurin, CEO of Liquid Dataport.
Part of Cassava Technologies, Liquid Dataport is a wholesale division of Liquid Intelligent Technologies, which aims to connect Africa with the rest of the world, potentially boosting international commerce and markets. They have investments in 11 submarine cables, including WACS, SAT-3, Equiano, 2Africa, PEACE, and ACE, to support organizations’ access to international connectivity from and into Africa.
The 2Africa project, backed by Meta and built by the 2Africa consortium, which includes China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone/Vodacom, and the West Indian Ocean Cable Company, is billed as the world’s longest subsea cable project. Alcatel Submarine Networks is responsible for the cable’s manufacture and deployment.
Eurin believes the 2Africa cable will bring essential internet capacity and reliability across Africa, addressing the rapidly growing demand in the continent and the Middle East.
The 2Africa cable is set to significantly support the expansion of 4G, 5G, and fixed broadband access for hundreds of millions of individuals across Africa. The project’s ripple effect is expected to stimulate job creation in numerous sectors in South Africa, including software development, internet connectivity, and data centres, according to Eurin.
“We expect 2Africa West and 2Africa East to be live by the end of the year,” says Eurin.
“The deployment of new subsea cables, bringing up to a hundred times more capacity than older cables, will help internet service providers and other IT companies to lower the cost of their services. This is crucial for South Africa to pivot to a digital economy, catching up with other developed economies and developing new services. This will lead to the creation of many value-added jobs in the service sector.”
Furthermore, Eurin anticipates that the completion of the 2Africa cable will lead to an upgrade in telecommunication services and other infrastructure programs throughout South Africa. The impact of this subsea capacity will be evident in all major towns across the country.
Covering a total length of 45,000 km, 2Africa is set to interconnect Europe (eastward via Egypt), the Middle East (through Saudi Arabia), with 46 global locations and 21 landing sites in 16 African countries. The cable is expected to provide more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa at present. It has a designed capacity of up to 180Tbps on key segments of the system.
The 2Africa subsea cable, upon completion, could potentially bring an economic impact of $26.2 to $36.9 billion, or 0.42-0.58% of Africa’s GDP, within two to three years of its commissioning, according to a study by RTI International.
In August 2023, the East African portion of the cable landed in Mozambique and Tanzania, leading to a new data centre establishment in Nacala-Porto by Master Power Technologies. The cable landed in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein in Western Cape in December 2022, in Gqeberha in Eastern Cape in January 2023, and in Amanzimtoti, KwaZulu-Natal, in February 2023.
The working philosophy of the 2Africa consortium is open access, meaning every 2Africa cable landing station operator will provide wholesale access fairly, reasonably, transparently, and non-discriminatorily. This move is expected to bolster competition among international bandwidth providers and result in better, more competitively priced broadband connectivity for consumers.
According to Eurin, Liquid Dataport’s fibre network spans over 110,000 km across Africa and carries data across more than 20 countries. He notes that 2Africa will pave the way for more South African organizations to access digital services like cloud, cyber security, satellite connectivity, and IoT networks, empowering them to extend their operations beyond the African continent due to the availability of a more reliable and extensive network, and lower latency.
He says, “We are integrating the 2Africa with our global network and as soon as it goes live, our network will make use of it. It will add much value, especially during instances where something happens to our other cables, like the Equiano, for example – our traffic will be rerouted to the 2Africa and the impact won’t be felt by customers.”
In 2022, Liquid Intelligent Technologies acquired a pair of fibre cables on the Equiano West Coast submarine cable, which it says can deliver up to 12 TB of new internet capacity.
Wrapping up, Eurin states, “Investments in the Equiano cable and significant capacity on the PEACE and 2Africa undersea fibre cables, together with our extensive terrestrial cross-border fibre broadband network, ensures reliability, cost-efficiency and reach to millions of businesses and people across the continent, with unprecedented bandwidth.”
