2Africa is a groundbreaking international submarine fibre\u2011optic system that, when complete, will stretch approximately 45,000\u202fkm, making it the world\u2019s longest subsea cable ever deployed, linking 46 landing stations across 33 countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Developed by a consortium including Meta, China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect (Bayobab), Orange, STC, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, and WIOCC, the system is designed with cutting\u2011edge SDM1 technology, offering up to 16 fibre pairs and a design capacity of 180\u202fTbps\u2014far exceeding the aggregate capacity previously available to Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cable officially began landings in April 2022, with the inaugural landing at Genoa, Italy. From there the project expanded rapidly, with installations across the continent and into the 2Africa PEARLS branch, which extends coverage into the Persian Gulf, India, and Pakistan, adding new landings such as Mumbai, Karachi, Barka, Kuwait City, Doha, and Manama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At its core, a cable landing station (CLS) is the interface between subsea infrastructure and the terrestrial network. These stations convert optical signals from undersea fibre into network infrastructure ashore, provide power for signal repeaters, and offer open-access capacity to telecom providers in carrier\u2011neutral or open\u2011access facilities, promoting a dynamic and competitive digital ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To provide geographic diversity and resilience\u2014for instance, Egypt features two completely separate landing stations, Port Said on the Mediterranean and Ras Ghareb on the Red Sea, connected by dual-terrestrial routes along the Suez Canal and a third subsea path for redundancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first official landing of 2Africa took place in April 2022. Vodafone \u2014 acting as landing party \u2014 partnered with Equinix to bring the cable into a carrier\u2011neutral data centre in Genoa, with terrestrial connectivity extending into Milan via infrastructure built with Retelit. This landing served as a launchpad for further Mediterranean and European integrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In February 2025, the cable reached Tympaki in southern Crete, landing at Vodafone Greece’s facility. This strategic hub connects the Mediterranean corridor, offering Greece enhanced access to the 180\u202fTbps subsea backbone and supporting Greece\u2019s digital economy transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Egypt\u2019s dual landing configuration represents a milestone in resilience. Telecom Egypt delivered the terrestrial crossing linking the Mediterranean and Red Sea landing stations ahead of schedule, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity across East Africa and Europe through diverse routing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Africa hosts multiple landing points to avoid geographic concentration. WIOCC\u2019s Open Access Data Centres (OADC) in Durban handled the landing into KwaZulu\u2011Natal in early 2023. Earlier in late 2022, the cable landed in the Western Cape at Yzerfontein and Duynefontein, and in the Eastern Cape at Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), spreading load and risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nigeria\u2019s connectivity through multiple entries ensures redundancy. In February 2024, the cable landed at Kwa Ibo (Qua Iboe Beach) in Akwa Ibom State via Equinix\u2011owned MainOne, following a landing in Lekki, Lagos, by Bayobab (MTN GlobalConnect) earlier that month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In September 2023, Muanda became the DRC\u2019s landing point through the joint venture Mawezi RDC SA (Orange DRC and Airtel). This reinforces digital transformation ambitions under national digital plans and ties the DRC into the broader network of 46 landings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other key landings include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the Atlantic coast, the cable connects Dakar (Senegal), Abidjan, Ghana, Angola, and onto the Canary Islands, Portugal (Carcavelos) and the UK (Bude)\u2014linking African digital infrastructure into European content and network centres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2Africa\u2019s technological design is engineered for speed, scale, and durability:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Egypt, the dual\u2011landing, multi\u2011route terrestrial crossing along the Suez Canal ensures continuity even if one path fails\u2014demonstrating the system\u2019s focus on geographical and operational resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once operational\u2014initially planned by late 2023 or 2024, with some sources suggesting parts are already live\u2014the system will directly impact around 3 billion people, representing 36% of the global population. Regions historically underserved in bandwidth\u2014such as parts of West, East, and Central Africa\u2014stand to gain dramatically improved speed, reliability, and affordability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This will unlock opportunities in education, healthcare, business, mobile broadband (4G\/5G), and cloud services. By linking to European data hubs in Genoa, Lisbon, Carcavelos, Bude, African traffic paths become more resilient and efficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts highlight that landing stations themselves can pose single points of failure\u2014especially when concentrated in one city or region. For example, all Kenya\u2019s landing points converge in Mombasa, raising vulnerability risks in case of disruptions. Diversification and cross\u2011border terrestrial connections are vital to enhancing resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Governance frameworks\u2014under international maritime law and national regulators\u2014must coordinate permits, power infrastructure, and maintenance planning. Delays in repairs can cost millions per outage<\/strong>, and in Africa, few cable repair vessels operate in regional waters. Thus, redundancy and connectivity diversity are key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of mid\u20112025, landing construction is ongoing across Africa, Asia, and Europe, targeting full operational status across most stations. Rollouts in Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Greece, DRC, and others position the system to dramatically scale bandwidth availability across the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once fully online, 2Africa will fundamentally reshape Africa\u2019s digital landscape by distributing robust, scalable, and open-access subsea connectivity across 46 landing stations in 33 countries. The open model empowers local and regional service providers to connect to a global communications backbone at fair terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In crafting this network of landing stations, 2Africa is not just building subsea fibre\u2014it\u2019s creating digital bridges across continents, layering resilience and access, and empowering economies spanning from Lagos to Genoa, Durban to Mumbai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2Africa is a groundbreaking international submarine fibre\u2011optic system that, when complete, will stretch approximately 45,000\u202fkm, making it the world\u2019s longest subsea cable ever deployed, linking 46 landing stations across 33 countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia. Developed by a consortium including Meta, China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect (Bayobab), Orange, STC, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, and WIOCC, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colocation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3682"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3686,"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682\/revisions\/3686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/datahall.co.ke\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\n\n\nLooking Ahead<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nIn Summary<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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