The first cable to connect East and West Africa in a single, continuous system, linking Africa with the Middle East, South Asia and Europe, this achievement marks a historic milestone in digital infrastructure, establishing what is currently the world’s longest open-access subsea cable system, spanning three continents over 33 countries, connecting 3 billion people.

The 2Africa system, architected and led by Meta in collaboration with partners including Bayobab (MTN Group), Orange, center3, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone Group, and WIOCC, is set to transform connectivity for 3 billion people, including Africa’s 1.4 billion people over the next decade.

With cutting-edge technology, 2Africa brings more subsea capacity than all of Africa’s subsea cables, combined, today, delivering faster, more reliable and cost-effective internet access to consumers and enterprises alike.

2Africa lays the foundation for transformative new AI experiences, economic growth, and digital inclusion across the continent – with its completion serving as a testament to what can be achieved through visionary investment and robust collaboration.

At the just-concluded launch event, Meta reaffirmed its commitment to investing in Africa’s digital future.

“The completion of 2Africa is a monumental achievement, not just for Meta, but for the entire continent. This project demonstrates what’s possible when vision, investment and collaboration come together – unlocking new opportunities for millions of Africans, empowering businesses and helping to accelerate economic growth. At Meta, we are proud to be the architects of this transformative infrastructure and remain deeply committed to investing in Africa’s digital future, in partnership with the ecosystem.” said Kojo Boakye, vice president, Public Policy, Africa, Middle East & Türkiye at Meta.

The 2Africa consortium, composed of both private and public sector leaders, exemplifies the power of collaboration in building the longest subsea cable system in the world.

With the completion of 2Africa, millions of Africans will experience improved internet speeds, greater reliability and expanded access to digital services.

Enterprises will benefit from enhanced connectivity, driving innovation, economic growth and global competitiveness.

The event brought together multiple stakeholders from across the continent, including the Minister of Post, Telecoms and Digital Economy of the DRC, Jose Mpanda Kabangu; telecommunications regulators from Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Mozambique, and Angola; as well as other senior officials including from Kenya and Nigeria.

“Completing the core 2Africa system is a milestone for open, reliable capacity spanning three continents. We built 2Africa to be open by design so more providers can connect and people and businesses can get faster, more dependable service,” said Alex-Handrah Aime, vice president, Network Investments at Meta.

“Under the surface, it’s engineered for scale, reliability and to power the next wave of cloud and AI experiences. Above the surface, it’s about everyday impact, from a student downloading a textbook in seconds to small businesses and entrepreneurs reaching new customers online. 2Africa lays the groundwork for inclusive growth today and the innovations we haven’t imagined yet.”

2Africa marks a defining moment for Africa’s digital future. By leading the design, funding and deployment of the world’s longest open‑access subsea cable to date, Meta and its partners are laying the foundation for faster, more reliable internet, new digital jobs and the next generation of online experiences.

The event concluded with an awards ceremony, where Meta recognised consortium members, including Paul Gabla (VP, Sales and Marketing, ASN), Mazen Mroué (CEO, Bayobab), Dejan Kastelic (CTO, Vodacom), Philippe Mendribil (MEA Networks Transformation and Cost Optimization, Orange), and Chris Wood (CEO, WIOCC), for their outstanding collaboration in delivering 2Africa.

The celebration also featured a symbolic 2Africa cable light-up ceremony, marking a significant milestone in the partnership.

Following several successful partnerships launching Camara-compliant Network APIs under the GSMA Open Gateway initiative, telcos and MNOs globally want to launch and monetize emerging and future services.

Many firms still need better relationships with developers to do so quickly and efficiently. That’s why MNOs are attending Infobip Shift this year.

Matija Ražem, VP of Business Development at Infobip, said:

“We are among the first to support the Camara project and the GSMA Open Gateway initiative, and closely working with telcos to deliver new added-value services. Our collaboration with Nokia, GSMA, and other MNOs at Shift Zadar shows how we work with our telco partners to expose customer experience-friendly APIs to developers”.

At Shift, Elmo, a tech-automotive company, will present its remote driving technology where attendees can drive a car in Finland through a console in Croatia.

Elmo worked with Nokia to implement its Network as a Code API to control Elmo cars remotely by operating the remote consol through the wireless 5G Campus network of Croatian Telekom and will count on Infobip’s and Croatian Telekom’s support to bring this experience in this year’s Shift Zadar edition to the guests.

“The work of building the Network API ecosystem has advanced remarkably well this year. This important developer event that our partner, Infobip, is hosting further underlines the strong appetite in that ecosystem to come together to share the latest information and solutions as we progress with making it easier for developers around the world to utilize network capabilities and develop new use cases for their customers,” said Shkumbin Hamiti, head of Network Monetization Platform, Cloud and Network Services at Nokia.

For GSMA – one of the main Shift Zadar sponsors this year – the Open Gateway initiative has a crucial role in the ecosystem of Telco APIs combined with CPaaS APIs. “The GSMA Open Gateway initiative is going from strength to strength and has culminated in the birth of a new API era. We want to nurture and grow this opportunity and provide access to developers, cloud providers, and telcos so they can launch game-changing new services. Our presence at Shift helps drive awareness of this opportunity and ensure its growth,” said Henry Calvert, Head of Networks at GSMA.

As one of the companies participating in Shift Zadar and providing the underlying communication technology for the Elmo remote driving experience, Boris Drilo, Chief Technical & Information Officer (CTIO) at Croatia Telekom, said:

“Network APIs are bringing the engagement of our customers and their favorite brands to the next level. Croatian Telecom offers this new business capability to Croatian businesses, bringing them eye-to-eye with their European peers. Telecom network capabilities exposure to developers has never been easier or simpler, revealing great possibilities. GSMA’s Open Gateway Initiative is making this approach scalable, creating the foundation for the rapid introduction of new use cases throughout telecom operators’ footprints. Croatian Telekom is opening the door to this new opportunity for all our partners to deliver their services in Croatia”.

As a great promoter and participant in the Open Gateway initiative, and one of the main guests at Shift Zadar 2024, Cedric Gonin, API Business Strategy and Channel Management Director at Orange, said:

“Making Network APIs accessible to developers is fostering innovation in several industries. At Orange, we are committed to share our APIs with developers and partners to experiment and implement new solutions. Our participation in the Infobip Shift event highlights our dedication to empowering the developer community with innovative tools that enable the creation of tomorrow’s digital services through the CAMARA API within the Open Gateway initiative.”

In fact, it’s predicted that Africa’s digital economy, fueled by hundreds of active tech hubs, could contribute nearly $180 billion to the region’s growth by the mid-decade.

Having produced several industry shakers in the fintech space, it’s perhaps not surprising that the continent has become a very attractive option for startup investment.

According to BCG, the rate of growth in the number of African startups receiving financial backing between 2015 and 2022 was nearly six times faster than the global average. And during the first nine months of 2023 alone, these tech ventures raised around $1.4 billion.

With SMEs already accounting for up to 90 percent of businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa, much focus is placed on supporting this vital sector of the economy to reach the levels of success we’ve come to associate with Africa’s tenacious startup culture.

The question is – how do we empower the small business down the road to rise to the ranks of a Flutterwave in Nigeria or M-KOPA in Kenya?

The cloud effect

Much of the answer lies with providing these enterprises with the technology they need to drive operational efficiencies and scale their operations.

Cloud technology, in the form of Microsoft Azure for example, has played an important part over the years in supporting Flutterwave’s core operations.

Now as the company seeks to build on its success it is again looking to the expansion power of the cloud, building its next generation platform on Azure so that it can process high volume payments at scale, while also ensuring a seamless and secure payment experience for its clients.

Kenyan startup, M-KOPA, recently raised $250 million in debt equity. The company, which provides digital financial services to underbanked consumers, also relies heavily on the computing capacity of the cloud.

In fact, its ability to process 500 payments per minute makes it possible for the startup to provide 3 million people across Africa with access to essential services such as solar power systems, digital loans, health insurance and smartphones.

Beyond fintech, small businesses are having a transformative impact on other key sectors such as healthcare. And as with Flutterwave and M-KOPA, many of these enterprises have something important in common – the backing of powerful technology.

In South Africa, Omnisient, is helping to elevate crucial decision-making across healthcare systems through a recent partnership with Altron HealthTech.

The startup has created a platform that facilitates data collaboration across records and datasets and can securely match anonymised patient information in a safe environment for analysis.

This allows Altron’s healthcare partners more insight into disease patterns and can improve treatments and medication efficacy. In the long term, Altron HealthTech hopes to use this information to support the healthcare industry in determining where new clinics, pharmacies and hospitals need to be built.

Another startup leaving its mark in the healthcare space, Zen Dawa, is helping to reimagine pharmaceutical operations across both rural and urban areas of East Africa by creating online access to pharmaceutical offerings as well as financing solutions for small businesses and pharmacy shops.

By making use of Microsoft’s robust AI platform built on Azure, the startup is helping to contribute positively to the availability of essential medicines across East Africa.

There are still many questions to be answered, however, when it comes to drawing a larger number of the continent’s SMEs into the digital economy. Africa is still behind other regions in the world when it comes to digital infrastructure coverage, access, and quality. We are also still battling a shortage of skills and inadequate regulatory policy environments. In fact, with just 22 percent of the population online, Sub-Saharan Africa is still the world’s least connected region.

Supercharging Africa’s dynamic startup ecosystem

Addressing these issues will rely in no small part on the development of strategic alliances across both public and private sectors. These collaborations are pivotal to the development of comprehensive solutions to the multi-faceted challenges faced by small businesses in Africa.

The FGN-ALAT digital Skillnovation Programme is a great example of this. A partnership between the Federal Government of Nigeria, Wema Bank, Get Funded Africa and Microsoft, the programme aims to train and equip one million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) across the country by the end of June 2024. Already 350, 000 MSMEs have been impacted.

Beyond skills, these businesses require business mentorship and access to market and finance opportunities – through effective collaboration the initiative aims to address all these needs in a holistic manner, facilitating opportunities, for example, to receive debt financing, equity investment and grants.

And by tapping into the distribution networks of multi-national corporations, the opportunity for strategic alliances to reach vast numbers of SMEs across the continent is significant.

A recent partnership between Orange and Microsoft aims to accelerate the digitisation of small businesses in Africa by leveraging the telco’s formidable network to provide SMEs with access to Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft 365, Copilot, Azure, and Dynamics 365.

Similarly, the FAST Accelerator programme, which was launched together by Flapmax and Microsoft, helps startups scale rapidly and access new growth opportunities by bringing together cutting-edge technologies and business development strategies.

Accelerators such as these with vast resources at their disposal are experiencing considerable success in helping startups like Zen Dawa to scale.

In fact, with the support of the programme, the company now plans to dramatically extend the number of pharmacies it services from 520 to 10,000 by the end of the year.

The more Africa can produce successful collaborations such as these, the more we’ll start to see a greater number of small businesses emerge as powerful economic contributors.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGFTUpJPqMl23UvPravjShg

These strategic partnerships hold the key to unlocking immense potential across sectors, empowering entrepreneurial ventures to drive new digital solutions to long-standing challenges and creating a ripple effect that reverberates throughout the continent.

Known as ‘2Africa,’ the cable landing station is at Mopo-Onibeju Lekki area of Lagos.

2Africa is said to be the longest under-water cable in the world, passing through three continents and 33 countries, several of which are in Africa; expanding the rapidly growing African digital economy and positively impacting growth across the continent.

According to Josephine Sarouk, managing director, Bayobab Nigeria, the cable will directly support economic development in Africa, fostering further growth of 4G, 5G and increased broadband penetration to millions of people and businesses.

“Bayobab has invested in a myriad of submarine cables to boost much-needed broadband capacity to the continent; and bolster efforts to leverage technology to connect the unconnected in Africa and beyond” and

“The landing of 2Africa in Nigeria will supercharge Nigeria’s digital economy, creating space for a vibrant ecosystem bringing digital services to millions of Nigerians in line with the government’s vision for a thriving digital economy.”

“Our investment in 2Africa is part of our commitment to our customers, bringing resilience to networks and capacity due to the growing demands for digital services such as Fintech, IOT, AI, e-learning, which continue to revolutionise the way customers engage with services, fueling the demand for more data. This landing is further proof of our long-held confidence in the future of the continent,” she said.

The landing of the cable means that Nigerian service providers can access capacity in an open-access cable landing station on a fair and equitable basis. This supports healthy ecosystem development by facilitating greatly improved quality and accessibility of internet connectivity for consumers and local businesses across all sectors.

This milestone achievement by Bayobab and MTN Nigeria will spur economic growth, innovation, and development in the nation.

The 2Africa consortium includes Bayobab, Center3, China Mobile International, Meta, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone Group, and WIOCC.

PHOTO NEWS:

Bayobab Group, as part of the 2Africa consortium, confirmed that the cable has landed in Lagos Nigeria.

The 2Africa consortium comprised of Bayobab, center3, China Mobile International, Meta, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone Group, and WIOCC, is developing the world’s largest subsea cable project.

Techeconomy also gathered that Dr. Bosun Tijani, the minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, will officially announce the landing of the cable in Nigeria.

These landings are the third and fourth for Bayobab as part of a series of six landings across five countries, including three locations in West Africa, including Ghana, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire as well as South Africa.

“Following two milestone landings in South Africa, we are pleased to announce 2Africa cable landing further up the continent, in Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria,” said Frédéric Schepens, CEO of Bayobab.

“The 2Africa initiative is at the core of the work we do as Bayobab, with the ultimate goal of connecting Africa to the world and the world to Africa. We are eager to continue offering services that will expand the rapidly growing African digital economy and positively impact growth across the continent.”

Through these landings Ghanaian and Nigerian service providers have access to capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis.

It will also support a healthy internet ecosystem development by enhancing internet accessibility for businesses across all sectors and customers. Bayobab partnered with MTN Opco’s to complete the cable landings.

“We want to deeply support the African continent’s capacity needs and provide the required digital infrastructure that can boost the digital economy,” added Mohammed Aliyu, chief fibreco officer at Bayobab.

“These cable landings lend further credence to our East2West project, which will enable us to bridge the digital divide in West Africa and the rest of the continent by supplying dark fibre access as well as active fibre capacity across more than 10 African countries, connecting several landlocked countries to subsea cables in the process.”

Nigeria and Ghana are set to play a key role in the growth of West Africa’s digital economy. The 2Africa cable will, therefore, go a long way towards transforming the region’s connectivity landscape.

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The arrangement gives customers direct access to the Francophone markets of West Africa and gives both companies the option to extend their respective global connectivity by sharing inland networks and the subsea cable network and backbone infrastructure of Angola Cables. 

Rui Faria, Global Commercial Director of Angola Cables, says,

“Getting access to efficient and secure digital and cloud services is an essential requirement for any business in today’s gigabyte economy.  Access to the West Africa Djoliba network and our robust submarine infrastructure broadens the capability of businesses in accessing international markets and offers expanded traffic destinations across West Africa and other parts of the world.“

Djoliba is the first network to offer complete security in West Africa with more than 10,000km of terrestrial fibre optic network offering, superfast broadband provision (up to 100 Gbit/s) at a 99.99% availability rate.

The expansion of infrastructure combining the Djoliba terrestrial end-to-end fibre optic network and Angola Cables’ already established global network of WACS, SACS and MONET cables will offer clients secure, low latency connectivity – and additional redundancy options to multiple destinations in South America, the USA and Europe.

As Africa’s most interconnected network operator, Angola Cables is a major wholesaler and carrier of the continent’s data and internet traffic to other parts of the world.

Faria says that the company has been spearheading digital connectivity in the South Atlantic for the past few years boosting economies in Africa and South America whilst providing uninterrupted, low-latency connections across the world through its robust global and partner network.  

Building on the fact that Nigeria has the largest Digital Economy in Africa and a National Digital Economy, Policy and Strategy that is consolidating the growth of the Digital Economy Sector; a delegation from Orange Group, (the Middle East and Africa) paid a courtesy visit to the Communications and Digital Economy Complex, Abuja.

The Orange team was in Abuja to officially inform Professor Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, of Orange’s decision to invest in the Nigerian Market. The team was led by Board Member of Orange group, Mrs Victoria Adefala.

Other members of the delegation included; Mrs Aminata Kana Ndiaye, CEO Orange Sierra Leone, Mr Alban Lo Gatto, General Counsel and Mr Jean Francois Thomas, Chief Strategy Officer

TechEconomy’s report of June 16 2020, Stéphane Richard, Chairman and CEO of Orange in company of other officials inaugurated Orange Middle East and Africa (Orange MEA) operational head office in Morocco as part of the African expansion plan.

“Orange is one of the rare international groups to have made the strategic choice, 20 years ago, to seek to develop in Africa and the Middle East. We have always been convinced of the immense potential of this region. In many ways, it can be seen as a model for digital transformation; mobile money is a great example of this. One of the key success factors behind new services is to develop them in Africa so that they are adapted to specific local requirements and so meet the needs of our customers. That is why we have decided to organise the management of our business in Africa and the Middle East from within the region directly from the African continent,” Richard said at that event.

Nigeria and South Africa are reportedly the key targets for the Company which has already established five Digital Centers in Africa and Middle East.

Industry watchers believe that Orange team’s visit to Prof Pantami is connected to Orange’s deployment of brand-new fibre backbone network in West Africa, comprising both terrestrial and subsea infrastructure to dramatically boost connectivity in the region.

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