45,000 km long, 2Africa is expected to connect 33 countries on three continents and provide improved connectivity to around three billion people. The infrastructure landed in Ghana last November.
Bayobab (formerly MTN GlobalConnect) announced on Thursday February 8 that it had landed the 2Africa submarine fiber optic cable in Lagos, Nigeria. The 45,000 km infrastructure is expected to help meet the growing demand for high-speed connectivity in the country.
Announced several months ago, the arrival of the 2Africa cable strengthens Nigeria's national telecoms infrastructure and its international bandwidth capacity. The country is already connected to six international submarine cables with a capacity of more than 40 Tb/s. These are Equiano cables from Google, SAT3, MainOne, Glo1, ACE and WACS.
The arrival of the cable comes at a time when the federal government is seeking to boost the deployment of high-speed telecoms infrastructure in Nigeria, as part of its digital transformation ambitions. The country needs to invest between 1.5 and 2 billion US dollars over the next few years to deploy around 60,000 km of additional optical fiber to ensure its complete coverage.
Furthermore, Nigeria is targeting a broadband penetration rate of around 70% by 2025. According to the latest statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the country had 90.7 million subscribers to Internet services. broadband for a penetration rate of 41.87% at the end of November 2023.