The 2Africa consortium announced, on Monday, that it will extend the subsea cable that serves the African continent and Middle East region to four more branches. The consortium includes China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, STC, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, and WIOCC. The new branches are Seychelles, the Comoros Islands, Angola, and the south-eastern part of Nigeria. They join the recently announced extension to the Canary Islands. It was announced last year that the 2Africa consortium will lay 37,000 km of cables. These cables interconnect Europe, via Egypt, and the Middle East, via Saudi Arabia, and 21 landings in 16 African countries. At the time, the involved parties said the 2Africa project would be completed either by 2023 or early 2024. Alcatel Marine Networks has been selected to implement the new site interconnection process, bringing the total number of 2Africa cable landing sites to 35 sites in 26 countries, contributing to the improvement of communications services within and outside the African continent. Significant progress has been made in planning and preparation of the 2Africa cable extension since its launch in May 2020 and the new system is expected to enter service by the end of 2023. Most of the marine surveys have been completed and Alcatel Marine Networks has started manufacturing the cable and reinforcement units at its plants in each of the two cities. France's Calais and Britain's Greenwich in preparation for the unloading of the initial sections of the cable in early 2022. With regard to the terrestrial transit routes through the Arab Republic of Egypt, the implementation of these tracks has been completed before the specified delivery date, and these tracks are one of the most important parts of the 2Africa submarine cable project, as they link the landing stations of the cable on both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea through two new and completely diversified land tracks, and a third marine route across the Red Sea will also be added to provide more diversity.
