FEATURE THE NEXT STEP IN AFRICA’S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Converged Open Digital Infrastructure BY CHRIS WOOD
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eploying the high-capacity Equiano and 2Africa subsea cable systems around Africa’s western and eastern coastlines brought transformational additional digital capacity, inter-continental and intra-Africa connectivity, improved resilience and digital ecosystem benefits to the continent. WIOCC is a full fibre pair owner on 2Africa and Equiano subsea cables.
EQUIANO CABLE: A FEW FACTS AND FIGURES
• Direct route between Africa and Europe • >12,000km long • Six landings: from Sesimbra in Portugal, Western Europe, to Melkbosstrand in South Africa • 12 fibre pairs • 144Tbps design capacity • Went live in 2023
2AFRICA: A FEW FACTS AND FIGURES
• Connecting Africa, Europe and Asia • Longest subsea cable in the world - >45,000km long • 46 cable landing stations in 33 countries • Up to 180Tbps design capacity on key parts of the system • Expected to fully (East and West sections) online by the end 2024 With numerous new landing points along Africa’s coast-
line, these cables offer cloud operators, content providers, telcos and internet service providers access to premium connectivity and the opportunity to build greater resilience into their networks and expand client service offerings. At the same time as this recent sharp rise in Africa’s subsea cable inventory, terrestrial fibre network infrastructure continued to expand and there has been exponential growth in Africa’s data centre estate. Together, all these developments are benefitting a wide range of businesses in Africa and enriching the lives of people throughout the continent.
TERRESTRIAL FIBRE NETWORK GROWTH
Increasing international subsea capacity is a key driver for further investment in terrestrial infrastructure. So too is the deployment of advanced 4G/5G mobile technologies, the increased need to support remote working practices and the growing migration of services and applications to the cloud. According to Hamilton Research, Africa’s total inventory of operational terrestrial fibre-optic transmission networks - which passed the 1 million route-kms milestone during 2018 – had grown to 1,279,026km by June 2023. In the preceding 12 months, an additional 94,998km of fibre optic network entered service – equivalent to 260km of new fibre optic network entering service each day. Approximately one-fifth of the total fibre inventory in Sub-Saharan Africa is within cities - at least 294,19-km JANUARY 2024 | ISSUE 134 73