Connected continent

Abstract

Africa is being ringed by networks of undersea communications cable systems that will play a major part in supporting the continent's future growth. Specially-equipped vessels tasked with laying subsea communications cables have, over the last four years, been navigating routes off the east and west coasts of Africa. The high-speed, high-capacity fibre-optic circuits they have been spooling out are now playing an integral part in facilitating the major digital links that will form the backbone of the continent's communications infrastructure for decades to come. Some of the cables can extend as far north as the UK, and land' (i.e., have multiple shoreward connections) on as many as 16 coastal countries between Mauritania and Melkbosstrand, some 35km away from Cape Town. Although these landing countries where shore stations are located and naturally positioned to gain most from being physically linked, the benefits of the offshore communications resources will eventually feed through to landlocked nation states in central Africa, enabling them to build out their own national networks in due course. As they become active, the subsea cables will hugely boost subsea cable service offering capacity on both sides of sub-Saharan Africa: all things being well, by the end of next year combined service capacities should exceed 67Tb/s on the west coast and 22Tb/s on the east coast. The full promise of the new comms cables will take time to roll out - but as it does so the effect should be profound.