The 2Africa submarine cable is expected to be ready for service in London, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa in September 2025.
2Africa is a consortium cable that comprises China Mobile International, Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, Center3, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, and WIOCC.
At 45,000 km long, 2Africa will be one of the world’s largest subsea cable projects and will interconnect Europe (eastward via Egypt), Asia (via Saudi Arabia), and Africa.
It was the longest submarine cable in the world until Meta Platforms announced Project Aquila, not Project Waterworth, earlier this year. This 50,000km cable will link the U.S., India, Brazil, South Africa, and Oceania.
Roderick Beck, a businessman who sources submarine and terrestrial transmission network capacity, has said that 2Africa’s West coast network should be fully activated by year’s end.
The cable runs from Lisbon and London along the West coast of Africa to South Africa. It landed in Yzerfontein near Cape Town in 2022, followed by landings in Mtunzini, Amanzimtoti, and the Coega SEZ in Gqeberha.
Beck explained that 2Africa is an open cable system, which means each fibre pair and spectrum owner is responsible for their own submarine line terminal equipment.
Therefore, some consortium members may be ready for service now, while others may only be ready in December.
“2Africa is not as fast as ACE or WACS. The map indicates it is probably at least 3 milliseconds slower one way from Dakar to Lisbon than the older cables,” Beck stated.
“This is intentional. The cable route minimises the time spent in shallow waters, defined as 1,000 meters or less, to reduce the chances of freight or fishing vessels damaging the cable.”
He said that 2Africa’s value proposition is threefold: offering bandwidth at half the total cost of ACE or WACS, being physically diverse from the older cables, and better uptime.
First announced in 2020, 2Africa was initially designed to span 37,000km and feature 21 landing stations across 16 African countries.
In September 2021, the consortium announced the 2Africa PEARLS branch, which extends to the Arabian Gulf, India, and Pakistan, bringing the system’s length to over 45,000km.
It was also expanded to include 50 landing stations, with 30 located in Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, according to TeleGeography.
Alcatel Submarine Networks was appointed to build 2Africa and its extensions using a new technology called Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM).
One benefit of SDM is that it allows 2Africa to support up to 16 fibre pairs, whereas older technologies used in existing African cables supported a maximum of eight fibre pairs.
However, the 2Africa consortium has been tight-lipped about how many fibre pairs will eventually be deployed and how many wavelengths per fibre pair will be supported.
It has only claimed that the cable will offer a design capacity of 180 terabits per second (Tbps).
The next-largest cable serving the African continent is Google’s Equiano cable, which boasts a design capacity of 144 Tbps.
Before 2Africa and Equiano, the WACS and ACE systems were the largest submarine cables serving South Africa.
