South Africa is opting out of the East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSY) broadband cable project and will develop its own US$700 million undersea cable that will connect to London and South America.
South Africa’s Department of Public Enterprises said Infraco, the state-owned broadband infrastructure firm that was formed last year, is leading the initiative.
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), an organization dedicated to developing telecom and IT to help spur economic development, spearheaded the EASSY project.
The director general at the South African Department of Communications, Lyndall Shope Mafole, said last week that EASSY was no longer a South African government priority because it does not contribute to the country’s development.
South Africa is the second country, after Kenya, to opt out of EASSY and construct a cable system that runs to Europe and other countries outside Africa.
The Kenyan government is developing a 990-kilometer undersea cable, dubbed the East Africa Marine System (TEAM), which will run from Mombasa in Kenya to the global network of fiber-optic cables at Fujaira, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The $110 million project is a joint venture between the Kenyan and UAE governments.
The private sector and South African government will fund the project. The cable is expected to be operational by 2009, according to Mafole.
Due to lack of undersea cables, Africa has mainly relied on the Sat 3 cable that runs from South Africa to West Africa. The bandwidth is controlled by state monopolies and is highly priced. Mafole said the new cable by the South African government would bring competition in the region and lower telecommunication costs.
However, EASSY member countries — including Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Botswana — fear that South Africa’s laying cable will again stall the EASSY project, which is already behind schedule by a year.
But NEPAD’s e-Africa Commission Policy and Regulatory Adviser Dr. Edmund Katiti said that while the EASSY project has fallen out of favor with South Africa, the country has agreed to continue coordinating its work with NEPAD. The e-African Commission is based in South Africa and operates under the aegis of NEPAD.
The new South African cable project “will serve as an extension of the submarine segment of the NEPAD network (EASSY) for Eastern and Southern Africa from Port Sudan to Durban and now to South America and London,” Katiti said in an e-mail.
The 9,900-kilometer EASSY cable is expected to run under the Indian Ocean from Durban in South Africa to Port Sudan in Sudan.
