Google has announced plans to build a subsea cable which will connect Africa with Australia.
Called "Umoja", which is a Swahili word for "Unity, the cable will be anchored in Kenya and will pass through Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, including the Google Cloud region, before crossing the Indian Ocean to Australia.
Umoja’s terrestrial path was built in collaboration with Liquid Intelligent Technologies to form a highly scalable route through Africa, including access points that will allow other countries to take advantage of the network.
Umoja joins the Equiano cable, launched in September 2022, in an initiative called Africa Connect which will seek to enable African countries to more reliably connect with each other and the rest of the world.
"Establishing a new route distinct from existing connectivity routes is critical to maintaining a resilient network for a region that has historically experienced high-impact outages," Google said in a statement.
Just this year, several subsea cable issues has led to extended periods of internet outage in Africa.