2Africa

Overview

2Africa is a submarine cable system developed by a multi-party consortium and constructed by Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN), one of the industry's most experienced marine cable contractors. The system carries a design capacity of 180 Tbit/s — distributed across multiple fiber pairs at 11.25 Tbit/s each — placing it among the higher-capacity systems deployed to serve African markets.

Capacity and Design

The 11.25 Tbit/s per fiber pair figure reflects a modern open-cable architecture, which allows landing parties to deploy their own transmission equipment and scale capacity independently over time. This approach has become increasingly common on consortium-built systems, as it reduces the risk of capacity bottlenecks as traffic demands grow and coherent optical technology continues to advance.

With an aggregate design capacity of 180 Tbit/s, 2Africa represents a significant step up from earlier-generation cables serving the continent, many of which were engineered at a fraction of that throughput.

Ownership and Build Context

The consortium model behind 2Africa is typical of large-scale international cable projects, where capital costs and landing rights are shared across multiple stakeholders — commonly a mix of global carriers, hyperscale content providers and regional operators. ASN's involvement as the manufacturing and marine contractor brings a well-documented track record across comparable long-haul deployments.

Regional Significance

Africa remains one of the most underserved regions in global submarine cable infrastructure relative to its population and growth trajectory. Systems like 2Africa are central to changing that equation, providing the raw capacity needed to support expanding internet access, cloud services and enterprise connectivity across the continent and its island territories. Where earlier cables were often built to serve wholesale transit demand, the scale of 2Africa suggests ambitions that extend to direct retail and cloud-edge connectivity in the markets it reaches.