This is a list of terrestrial fibre optic cable projects in Africa. While submarine communications cables are used to connect countries and continents to the Internet, terrestrial fibre optic cables are used to extend this connectivity to landlocked countries or urban centers within a country with submarine cable access. While in most of the world a large number of such cables exist, often amounting to robust Internet backbones, the lack of such high-speed cables poses a great problem for most African countries. The construction of both submarine cables and their terrestrial extensions is thus considered an important step to economic growth and development to many African countries.
The Malian government has announced a 942 km fibre optic cable project which will link Bamako-Gao-Kidal-Tin-Zaoutière to the Algerian border and Gap-Ansongo-Labezanga to the border of Niger. This project is funded by a 45 million dollar loan from the Export-Import Bank of China.[9]
Phase3 are building the West Africa One network, which is an aerial optic fibre transmission system which will run from Nigeria to Benin and Togo, possibly beyond.[12]
Telkom is the dominant operator and has the largest fibre network in South Africa, covering approximately 143,000 km as per the 2011 annual report.[16]
Broadband Infraco is a South African State Owned Entity (SOE) that is intended to participate in those segments of the telecommunications market and value chain that impede private sector development and innovation in telecoms services and content offerings. Broadband Infraco maintains a national long distance fibre optic network, providing high capacity telecommunication services between all major national metropolitan centres and being expanded to enable connectivity to reach smaller cities and rural areas[17]
Community Investment Ventures (CIV) and Venfin are the principal shareholders in DFA. ABSA Capital, who are a stakeholder in CIV via New GX Capital Holdings, also backs CIV. Shareholders in Dark Fibre Africa have granted the necessary approvals to adequately capitalize the company for the construction of a nationwide Dark Fibre Infrastructure. This funding will exceed R2Bn by 2013.[18]
Established in 2009 as an equal partnership between CellC, Internet Solutions and Convergence Partners, FibreCo aims to deploy a state-of-the-art fully managed long-haul fibre optic terrestrial network. FibreCo will develop infrastructure where necessary and leverage already available fibre networks and other relationships to provide the most efficient route combinations. FibreCo will offer a fully managed monitoring and maintenance service of the network on a 24/7 basis for its tenants. A range of additional value-added services will also be available, dependent on customer requirements.[19]
NLD Consortium
A consortium made up of Neotel, MTN, and Vodacom are deploying a national fibre network in South Africa.[20]
This list was initially developed as part of AfTerFibre,[24] a project to map terrestrial fibre optic cable projects in Africa. The project is sponsored by Google Africa and, on completion, will be hosted by the UbuntuNet Alliance. All information gathered by the project will be publicly available under an open license.
