Google stated on Thursday it’ll construct a fiber optic cable to attach Africa and Australia. Named Umoja (a Swahili phrase that means “unity”), one finish of the cable will begin in Kenya and move via Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa (with entry factors for the nations) earlier than crossing the Indian Ocean to the land down below.
Google says the venture is designed to “improve digital connectivity, speed up financial progress, and deepen resilience throughout Africa.” Along with the cable itself, the corporate says it’ll work with the Kenyan authorities to spice up cybersecurity, data-driven innovation, digital upskilling and responsibly and safely deploying AI.
Umoja will be a part of Equiano, Google’s non-public undersea cable working between Portugal and South Africa (with pitstops in different nations).
Google says the brand new route is essential to strengthen community resilience within the area, which has a historical past of “high-impact outages.” In different phrases, extra community redundancy makes outages much less catastrophic to the realm’s broadband infrastructure.
“The brand new intercontinental fiber optic route will considerably improve our international and regional digital infrastructure,” Kenyan President William Ruto wrote concerning the initiative in a Google weblog put up. “This initiative is essential in making certain the redundancy and resilience of our area’s connectivity to the remainder of the world, particularly in gentle of latest disruptions brought on by cuts to sub-sea cables. By strengthening our digital spine, we’re not solely bettering reliability but in addition paving the best way for elevated digital inclusion, innovation, and financial alternatives for our folks and companies.”
