2Africa to Go Live This Year, Boost SA’s Job Creation
By Sibahle Malinga, ITWeb
January 29, 2024
The 2Africa subsea cable is expected to have a ripple effect on South Africa’s internet connectivity and significantly boost economic growth, when it is completed later this year.
This was the word from David Eurin, CEO of Liquid Dataport, speaking to ITWeb about the company’s investment in several submarine cables, as part of the company’s vision to connect Africa to the rest of the world and catapult international trade and markets.
A business of Cassava Technologies, Liquid Dataport is a wholesale division of Liquid Intelligent Technologies focused on supporting its organisations to access international connectivity, from and into Africa, by leveraging its investment in 11 submarine cables, including WACS, SAT-3, Equiano, 2Africa, PEACE and ACE.
Billed as the world’s longest subsea cable project, 2Africa is a Meta-backed project being built by the 2Africa consortium, which comprises China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone/Vodacom and the West Indian Ocean Cable Company.
It is manufactured and deployed by Alcatel Submarine Networks.
Discussing the impact of the 2Africa cable, Eurin points out the cable will deliver much-needed internet capacity and reliability across Africa, supplementing the fast-growing capacity demand on the continent and in the Middle East.
It will underpin further growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for hundreds of millions of people on the continent – with its ripple effect expected to boost job creation across several sectors in SA, including software development, internet connectivity and data centres, he notes.
“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.”
