GOOGLE STARTS BUILDING CABLE BETWEEN SA AND AUS

Africa and Australia are about to become connected like never before.

Google has started building a submarine cable that will connect the two continents. The project has been named Umoja which means unity in Swahili.

According to the internet search giant, this is the first fibre-optic route to directly connect Africa with Australia.

Umoja will join other under-sea cables that connect South Africa to the rest of the world. They are WACS, Equiano, SAFE, EASSy, Seacom, SAT-3, ACE and 2Africa.

In a statement released by Google, it said Umoja will be anchored in Kenya as well as pass through Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. It will include the Google Cloud region before crossing the Indian Ocean to Australia.

Thanks to Umoja’s access points, other countries will also be able to take advantage of the network.

Strive Maiyiwa, chairman and founder of Liquid said major cities in Africa will enjoy uninterrupted connections to the rest of the world.

“Africa’s major cities, including Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali, Lubumbashi, Lusaka and Harare, will no longer be hard-to-reach endpoints remote from the coastal landing sites that connect Africa to the world.”