2Africa coming ashore north of Cape Town

Meta Platforms-backed submarine Internet super-cable, the 2Africa system that will eventually encircle the African continent, has landed in South Africa, at a site north of Cape Town.

The cable system, which will have a final design length of an extraordinary 45 000km — making it one of the longest such systems ever built — is backed by the Facebook parent as well as a range of telecommunications operators, including MTN Group, Orange, Center3, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone Group and Wiocc.

The high-capacity cable system has now come ashore at Yzerfontein and Duynefontein in the Western Cape. The Yzerfontein landing will support the 2Africa West cable and an MTN South Africa landing station in nearby Duynefontein will support the 2Africa East cable.

The landing comes just months after Google, with Telkom, brought ashore the massive Equiano system in South Africa, which connects South Africa to Europe along Africa’s west coast.

Unlike Equiano, the 2Africa cable will eventually encircle the entire African continent, with the first part of the system scheduled to go live next year.

“This subsea cable will lay the foundation for improved global Internet access, connecting people and continents. Once live, it will play a big part in delivering much-needed capacity in Africa from Europe, the Middle East and Asia,” MTN GlobalConnect, which is the landing partner for the 2Africa system in South Africa and several other markets, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The 2Africa landing is one of several cable landings taking place across 46 locations in 33 countries.”

MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita said: “Data traffic across African markets is expected to grow between four- and five-fold over the next five years, so we need infrastructure and capacity to meet that level of growth and demand.”

Read: Google’s giant Equiano Internet cable has landed in South Africa

The 2Africa subsea cable system will connect the western and eastern sides of Africa, once complete in 2023 and 2024 respectively. “This means that South African service providers can acquire capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis. This will support the development of a healthy Internet ecosystem by facilitating improved Internet accessibility for businesses and consumers alike,” MTN said in its statement.