MTN South Africa and MTN GlobalConnect, in partnership with the 2Africa consortium, which includes China Mobile International, Meta, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, center3, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC, have announced that the 45 000km 2Africa cable has landed in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein, South Africa.

According to a statement released to the media, for MTN GlobalConnect, this landing is the first in a series of six across five countries: South Africa (two), Sudan, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and Ghana.

The companies say the 2Africa cable connection will go live in 2023 and is expected to play a big part in delivering much-needed capacity in Africa from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The 2Africa landing is one of several cable landings taking place across 46 locations in 33 countries.

MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita said: “Strategic partnerships such as the one we have with the 2Africa consortium will help us accelerate and deepen internet adoption and socio-economic progress across the African continent. Data traffic across African markets is expected to grow between four and five fold over the next 5 years, so we need infrastructure and capacity to meet that level of growth and demand”.

“Our target, which is underpinned by MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy, is to rollout a total of 135 000 km of proprietary fibre by 2025, generating up to US$1-billion in revenue.”

MTN GlobalConnect CEO Frédéric Schepens said: “MTN GlobalConnect is pleased to participate in this bold 2Africa subsea cable project. The initiative complements our terrestrial fibre strategy to connect African countries to each other and to the rest of the world. We are building scale infrastructure assets to meet the explosive growth in data traffic and accelerate the digital economy on the continent, by creating a pan-African fibre railroad driving affordable connectivity.”

He added: “We are proud of the progress made on our journey and of the key role we are playing in providing South Africans and the rest of Africa with the benefits of a modern connected life.”

The partners add that the 2Africa subsea cable system will support 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,” they state.

MTN GlobalConnect – which is the 2Africa landing party in Duynefontein and Yzerfontein – has partnered with MTN South Africa to complete the landing on South African soil. The Yzerfontein landing will support the 2Africa West cable and the MTN South Africa landing station in Duynefontein will support the 2Africa East cable.

The cable, with a design capacity of up to 180 TBps. on key parts of the system, will deliver much-needed internet capacity, reliability, and improved internet performance across large parts of Africa; supplement the fast-growing capacity demand in the Middle East; and underpin the further growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for millions of people.