FEATURE
CLEARING THE BEACH
THE CASE FOR ANGOLA AS THE LOWEST LATENCY ROUTE CONNECTING AFRICA’S ATLANTIC & INDIAN OCEANS BY MIRO NAPOLEÃO
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xcept for South Africa, Angola has the highest number of current and planned submarine cable landings on its territorial shores in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Yet Angolan public and private enterprises have failed to capitalize on either the country’s privileged geographical position between the Atlantic Ocean – Central Africa – Southern African axis, or the massive upsurge in primarily U.S.-based funds allocated for investment in information and communications technologies (ICT) infrastructure projects in Africa since 2018. Several factors such as language barrier, ineffective U.S. funding awareness campaigns, an unclear ICT foreign investment strategy by the Angolan government, unavail-
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ability of data regarding existing telecom infrastructure in Angola, and a general inability of Angolan enterprises to comply with international funding eligibility criteria play a significant role in the failing. Shortcomings that have not gone unnoticed by Angola’s regional neighbors and international companies who have been prime beneficiaries of said opportunities, despite Angola’s initial success stories connecting to the global Internet through the seas. Like the country’s insertion to the global economy in the late 15th-century, Angola’s connection the global Internet ecosystem in the early 21st-century was through the Atlantic Ocean, considered spectacular yet full of controversy during both periods in time. In the early 2000s, the