FEATURE
EXPEDITING AFRICA’S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION BY CHRIS WOOD
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ollowing extensive investment in submarine cable systems for Africa between 2009 and 2013, which saw deployment of systems such as EASSy, Seacom, TEAMS, SEAS, LION and LION2 on the east coast and WACS, ACE, Glo1 and MainOne on the west, new African subsea systems were few and far between. This ended in 2021, with DARE1, METISS and the ACE extension to South Africa all coming into service. Africa is now preparing for the launch in 2023 of two new 100+Tbps systems – Equiano and 2Africa – interconnecting many locations on the continent’s eastern and western
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SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE
seaboards, and the PEACE cable, which will interconnect Africa’s eastern seaboard to Asia and Europe. This ongoing and very significant expansion in Africa’s subsea inventory creates opportunities to play an increasingly important and profitable role in the digital transformation of Africa. Submarine cable investors, cloud operators, content providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), fixed and mobile telcos and multinational corporations (MNCs) all stand to benefit from the dramatic increase in Africa’s investment in digitisation and digital technologies.