At 37,000 kilometers long, 2Africa will be nearly equal to the circumference of the Earth. China Telecom has linked up with Facebook, Orange and five other partners to create this infrastructure network.
The project is impressive for more than length alone: it will provide nearly three times the total network capacity of all the subsea cables serving Africa today. When completed, this new route will deliver much-needed internet capacity, redundancy, and reliability across Africa; supplement a rapidly increasing demand for capacity in the Middle East; and support further growth of 4G, 5G, and broadband access for hundreds of millions of people.
27 July 2021 (Sliema, Malta) – Having lived in Belgium for a good chunk of my time you can’t help but learn about Africa – and Belgium’s wonderful and “humane” approach to the continent by King Léopold II. Plus in Brussels you are surrounded by excellent restaurants with amazing cuisine from Cameroon, Ethiopia, Morocco, Somalia, etc.
But I learned about Africa well before that. My brother-in-law was a chief marine engineer for a large oil services company and worked in Libya and Tunisia which afforded me the opportunity to visit much of North Africa.
And through the good fortune of knowing a chap by the name of Nigel Murray I was able to do some “extreme discovery” projects – which is data collection/data investigation in extreme environments in such places as Cote d’Ivoire (where I went) and Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
And China has taken an extreme interest in China but it has found technology to be more agreeable than Léopold II’s tactics as noted in “Chinese Tech, Ignored by the West, Is Taking over Africa’s Cyberspace”. The author reports:
While China’s telecom giant Huawei has come under increasing attack in the US and the European Union, it is thriving in Africa. The drive to lure people comes as Huawei faces mounting attacks from the West. But in Africa, the company has a solid base. Currently, Huawei is active in most African countries. According to an Atlantic Council study – “The Digital Infrastructure Imperative in African Markets,” – around 50 percent of Africa’s 3G networks and 70 percent of its 4G networks are built by Huawei.
What’s Huawei’s secret sauce? The article quotes an expert who asserts:
“Huawei has a big competitive advantage because it’s got access to state capital,” says Eric Olander, managing editor of The China Africa Project, a portal that monitors Chinese business ventures across the continent.
What’s that “state capital” enable? Check out the map above. The white line is cable which surrounds the African continent. Sixteen major nodes are planned. The 5G system will connect hundreds of millions of people.
Gee, maybe the Google Loon balloons will be given another shot at the Internet connectivity, like what Google deployed in Puerto Rico after that vicious hurricane. And Facebook has those model 5G airplane-type devices. And Elon Musk has all these nifty satellite things.
But for now, Huawei is having its way with 5G, Internet connectivity, and capturing a growing market for devices and services all across Africa.