HONG KONG, Nov. 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — China Mobile International Limited (CMI), along with seven global partners including Bayobab, center3, Meta, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone Group, and WIOCC, has jointly completed the core 2Africa Submarine Cable Infrastructure (2Africa). Circling the African continent and connecting intercontinental nodes across Europe, Asia, and beyond, the 2Africa will further expand CMI’s global submarine cable layout and international connectivity resources, providing a robust digital infrastructure to accelerate the digital economic development in Africa and the surrounding regions.
As the first cable to continuously link Africa’s east and west within a single system, 2Africa adopts an open-access model. Spanning over 45,000 kilometers, it connects 33 + countries / regions across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, with a design capacity of 180Tbps. According to estimates, 2Africa is projected to contribute up to USD36.9 billion to Africa’s GDP within the first two to three years of operation.
Following the commissioning of the 2Africa’s key segments, CMI has further optimized resource allocation along the Arabian Sea, the eastern and western coasts of Africa, and Europe. It has also created synergies with high-capacity submarine cables along the eastern and western coasts of Africa such as PEACE and Equiano, enabling CMI to enhance the multi-ring network covering Africa. Leveraging global network resources in Djibouti, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, and other locations, as well as submarine cable systems such as IAX-IEX, 2Africa integrates Eurasia-Africa’s high-capacity bandwidth with extensions of local terrestrial cable and PoP. This initiative aims to build a leading regional international submarine cable connectivity that covers Africa while extending its influence to Asia-Pacific and Europe.
CMI leverages 2Africa’s technical advantages of “high-bandwidth and low-latency” to form powerful synergies with the company’s existing cloud-network capabilities, including over 100 submarine and terrestrial cables, 380+PoPs, and 1,270+ data centers worldwide. This robust infrastructure allows CMI to provide global carrier customers with high-quality international private lines, cloud private lines, and interconnection services covering multiple core cities in Africa and extending to the African interior. Together with the mCloud cloud-network integration portal with a one-stop integrated package featuring “a unified platform, one country, one price, one-click ordering, and end-to-end services,” CMI offers AI+ cloud-network integration solutions for enterprises to step into Africa and the Middle East markets, as well as local partners. These solutions focus on key African industries, such as AI+ Smart Energy Mining and AI+ Smart Park, driving the region toward an AI-powered digital intelligence future.
CMI has been tapping into the African market since 2015. The completion of the core 2Africa submarine cable infrastructure will further enrich network resources in the African region, delivering high-quality, reliable connectivity to critical sectors such as education, healthcare, and financial services, thereby accelerating Africa’s digital transformation and improving the lives of communities across the continent.
Looking ahead, CMI will continue to leverage submarine cable projects such as the 2Africa to accelerate the implementation of new information infrastructure and new information service system in Africa, contributing digital and intelligent solutions to the continent and comprehensively supporting the vigorous development of Africa’s digital economy.
