Industry players have said that Africa will get eight new submarine cables in the coming years.
They also said that Africa’s emerging digital market has the fastest growth rate globally, with bandwidth growth on the increase.
They said this at an event where submarine operators such as Ciena sat to discuss Africa’s emerging submarine cable market and its impact on broadband penetration.
The experts said that as the world’s second most populous continent with 1.4 billion people and covering 20 per cent of the planet’s landmass, adequate availability of digital infrastructure across the continent would play a crucial socioeconomic role in helping to increase critical connectivity options.
According to them, only 25 per cent of the 1.4 billion African people are connected to the internet presently.
Chief Technical Officer of MainOne, Anil Verma, highlighted the critical role that MainOne had played in deepening broadband penetration and digital growth in Africa.
He said the company was the only multinational to boast of service coverage in 10 West African countries, connected to IXs in London, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Marseille and Frankfurt, Lagos, Accra and Abidjan with three additional IP transit ports, with Tier 1 ISPs in Europe.
According to the experts, submarine cables carry close to 99 per cent of the world’s intercontinental electronic communications traffic, and Africa requires access to this global submarine network infrastructure to fully benefit from an international digital economy.
MainOne said it had landed its submarine cable in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire where it equally operates data centres.
