Google’s Equiano submarine cable begins operation in Nigeria by December

myDelsu News Staff

285 2 minutes read

Google, a multinational technology company, has announced that its Equiano subsea Internet cable, which arrived in Nigeria in April and spans a distance of 12,000 kilometers, will go live in December.

Equiano is now operational and running through Togo, Nigeria, Namibia, and South Africa, according to Google. This will allow Equiano to connect St. Helena, Togo, Nigeria, Namibia, and South Africa with Europe, which is expected to result in faster Internet speeds at lower costs across the continent.

This information was shared by the American company yesterday at the second Google for Africa event, where it was stated that more than twenty percent of the one billion dollars that was announced the previous year to be spent on the region in the following five years has been adequately deployed.

According to the company, a recent economic impact assessment carried out by Africa Practice and Genesis Analytics discovered that the cable would accelerate economic growth by the year 2025, with GDPs in Nigeria increasing by $10.1 billion, South Africa increasing by $7 billion, and Namibia increasing by $260 million.

As a result of the rise of the digital economy and peripheral sectors, Equiano is anticipated to be indirectly responsible for the creation of 1.6 million employment in Nigeria, 181,000 jobs in South Africa, and 21,000 jobs in Namibia within the same time period.

Sundar Pichai, the Chief Executive Officer of Google, made the announcement at the online event that the company plans to establish a new Google Cloud region in South Africa, which will be the company’s first location on the African continent.

Pichai added that the new Cloud Region would assist users, developers, businesses, and educational institutions across Africa in moving more information and tools online, improving access options for customers, and ultimately producing new job opportunities.

Nitin Gajria, Managing Director of Google Africa, stated that the company is partnering with governments, policymakers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), telecoms, business leaders, creators, and media in order to assist in accelerating Africa’s transition to a digital economy.

Niral Patel, the director of Google Cloud Africa, made the following statement: “We believe in growing an open and healthy ecosystem of technological solutions to support Africa’s digital transformation ambitions, which leads to greater opportunities for businesses.” Because we believe that showing consideration for the natural world should be an integral part of all we do as a company, we are committed to maintaining the most environmentally friendly cloud infrastructure in the business.

“In addition to the cloud area, we are in the process of expanding our network by means of the Equiano undersea cable and constructing Dedicated Cloud Interconnect sites in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lagos, and Nairobi.” As a result of this, we are developing full-scale cloud capabilities for Africa.

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