TECHNOLOGY: Linking Africa to the Information Superhighway

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Marina Marais

JOHANNESBURG, May 30 2002 (IPS) - A system for Africans, developed and run by Africans. That is how one Telkom executive describes the 639-million-U.S.-dollar undersea fibre optic cable.

Launched in Dakar, Senegal, on May 27, the 26,448km undersea cable links ten African countries with Europe and Asia. From Africa it hooks into a vast network of global submarine cable systems, for the first time linking African countries to the world’s information superhighway.

Spearheaded by Telkom, — the South African telecommunications firm — the project pools African and international resources. It is a major boost for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the socio-economic plan championed by South African President Thabo Mbeki, Nigerian head of state Olesagun Obasanjo and Senegal’s Abdulaye Wade.

The cable will see Africa reap immediate savings on dollar payments to European and American telecom operators. “A simple telephone call to a neighbouring African state often means that traffic must be routed via satellite through Europe or the United States. This is a relic of Africa’s colonial pasts. This cable will stop the haemorrhaging of foreign exchange out of Africa,” says Telkom chief Sizwe Nxasana, adding that African operators could save as much as 300 million U.S. dollars per annum.

The project combines three cable projects — the Southern African Telecommunications cable, the West African Submarine Cable and the South African Far East Cable. Known by the unwieldy name of SAT3/WASC/SAFE, it consists of submarine cable from Portugal to Cape Town (South Africa) and another from Cape Town to Malaysia.

On the western side, the cable lands in Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Angola and Melkbosstrand (north of Cape Town). On the eastern leg, it lands at Mtunzini in northern KwaZulu Natal (South Africa) before heading off for Reunion, Mauritius, India and Malaysia.

A further estimated 25 landlocked African countries are linked through terrestrial and satellite networks.

The vision for a new African cable began in the early 1990s. Various satellite and cable projects — including the overly ambitions Africa One, which initially planned to festoon all African states on the coast and would cost 2.4 billion U.S. dollars — were mooted. Most have been disbanded or are still in conceptual phase.

The fact that African telecom operators and governments were able to combine three initiatives is major endorsement of Telkom’s negotiating and project management capabilities.

“Telkom demonstrated tremendous leadership in this big scope project,” says Scott Brown, director of projects at Tyco Telecommunications Inc, the U.S. company, which with Alcatel of France designed, built and installed the cable.

Though the project was in drafting phase for many years, there were difficult sovereign, political, technical and financial issues that had to be ironed out. Bringing together various African countries, linking in Malaysia and India, and the subsequent pact with leading European and U.S. operators was quite a challenge. With 36 operators involved, just choosing a name for the cable took a couple of days of discussion.

The project will improve South Africa’s global connectivity capacity by 2.5 times. With future upgrades this could increase to 15 times.

The technical details are impressive. The link from Europe to South Africa (WASC/SAT3) has a total capacity of 120 gigabits per second. That is equal to 5.8 million simultaneous telephone calls, the content of 25 DVD disks transmitted in one second or 2304 television channels. The link from South Africa to Malaysia has an even greater ultimate total capacity of 130 gigabits, giving it the potential to carry 6.3m simultaneous telephone calls or 2496 television channels.

Providing unprecedented bandwidth and reliability, the cable will provide some of the backbone infrastructure needed to bridge the digital divide and opens up all kinds of opportunities for economic growth, says Brown.

He says that India and parts of China have shown how with the relevant infrastructure and technical skills, developing countries can leapfrog into the computer age.

The cable will realise Telkom’s ambition to become a hub for southern African telecom traffic, says Nxasana. Telkom is targeting multinationals that currently rely on V-Sat satellite solutions. The plan is to route this and other neighbouring traffic to South Africa via terrestrial or satellite links and then hooks into the cable.

It was with this in mind that Telkom has spearheaded and pumped 85 million U.S. dollars into the cable project. However, operators outside Africa have funded an impressive 54 percent of the project.

“The entire project has been funded by 36 telecommunication operators from 31 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and the United States. We have been able to leverage our African investments with those from the international community. In addition, we are using African terms to manage our communications needs as opposed to terms dictated to us by non-Africans. This embodies the spirit of NEPAD,” says Nxasana.

Despite the low gross domestic product of West African partners, they are expected to be big users of the cable.

Nxasana expects a rapid return on investment because of pent-up demand for reliable international connectivity. Multinational oil and mining companies have already indicated they are willing to fund terrestrial communication links for landlocked countries.

A feasibility study is underway to determine if the cable can be extended up the East Coast of the continent to Ethiopia and beyond. This should be completed in three months.

Increasingly, Africa will no longer be reliant on former colonial masters for basic communications needs.