The Meta-led 2Africa subsea cable has landed in Angola's capital city, Luanda.
State-owned local telco Unitel this week announced the landing of the 2Africa subsea cable on the seafront in Luanda, in the Municipality of Cacuaco.
Angola’s Telecoms Minister, Mário Oliveira, said: “A country can only be built with knowledge, awareness, development and also with great leadership. Our country has great leadership and proof of that is the support we gave to Unitel, in order to embrace this great project that is 2Africa.”
The landing is the first major part of the West African side of the 2Africa cable, which begins at MTN’s Yzerfontein landing station in South Africa.
Work laying the East African portion of the cable started in late 2022, with the most recent landing made at Port Said in Egypt in April 2023.
Meta, along with Telecom Egypt, China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, STC, Vodafone, and the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) announced the 2Africa cable, that would circle the African continent, back in 2020.
At 45,000km, it is the world's largest subsea cable and will connect 33 countries with 46 landing points across Africa, Europe, and Asia when it is complete. Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) is responsible for manufacturing and deploying the 16-fiber pair, 180Tbps cable, which is due for completion in 2024.
The West African Trunk will run from South Africa north to the UK, also landing at Muanda in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Pointe-Noire in the Republic of the Congo; Libreville, Gabon; Lagos and Kwa Ibo, Nigeria; Accra, Ghana; Abidjan on the Ivory Coast; Dakar, Senegal; Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands; Carcavelos, Portugal; and Bude, UK.
Luanda is also a landing for the 2002 SAT-3WASC cable linking South Africa to Spain and Portugal. Further south, Sangano is the landing point for the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) and West Africa Cable System (WACS), launching in 2018 and 2012 respectively.
This year has seen the launch of the Angolan domestic Unitel North Submarine Cable (UNSC) linking N’zeto with Cacongo and Soyo with Cabinda, with the upcoming Nzadi domestic cable system linking Luanda with Soyo and Cabinda also set to launch this year.
