Company Launches Fiber-Optic Cable for Southern, Eastern Africa

04 August 2009

By Charles W. Corey
Staff Writer

Documents & Texts from America.gov

Nairobi, Kenya — Southern and Eastern Africa are better connected to the rest of the world by a new underwater fiber-optic communications cable that runs off the eastern and southern coasts of Africa.

With the new cable, installed by the SEACOM company, communications costs in Africa have a better chance of falling into line with the lower prices paid in other regions of the world, SEACOM President Brian Herlihy said August 4. He spoke at the combined opening of the civil-society and private-sector sessions of the Eighth AGOA Forum in Nairobi.

Addressing the African ministers, civil society activists and business executives gathered at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Herlihy said SEACOM’s cable went live July 23. Since the launch of the cable, Safaricom, one of Kenya’s major cell phone providers, reports a 60 percent jump in data activity on its network, Herlihy said.

To illustrate how the new cable has improved Internet connections, Herlihy said that he mistakenly brought the wrong video presentation to the AGOA Forum. After realizing that, he said, he was able to download the video presentation he meant to bring — an 800 megabyte file — in 15 minutes. Previously, that would have taken 30 hours, he said.

"So when you begin to talk about productivity and doing business in Africa," he said, SEACOM is removing the bottleneck of poor Internet communication.

"Now the challenge to us is to ensure that once these mega-products are in place, that we attract American investment," he said.

As an American working in Africa for a long time, Herlihy readily acknowledged that the continent is a very challenging place to work, but he said it contains the labor, expertise and, most important, "local knowledge" needed to make investments pay off.

"We are very proud that SEACOM is 25 percent owned by Americans and more proud that it is 75 percent owned by African investors," he told the delegates. He asked all Americans to seriously look at Africa as a true place for investment.