Business
Bridging Africa’s digital divide
Ms. Funke Opeke CEO of Main One Cable.
Stretching some 7,000 kilometers along the West African coastline, a submarine fiber-optic cable emerges off the coast of Nigeria to help bridge the digital divide in the continent.
Dubbed Main One Cable, the system links West Africa with Europe, bringing ultra-fast broadband in the region. It runs from Seixal in Portugal through Accra in Ghana to Lagos in Nigeria and branches out in Morocco, Canary Islands, Senegal, and Ivory Coast.
The cable, which has a capacity of 1.92 terabits a second, first went live in July 2010, becoming the first subsea cable to bring open-access, broadband capacity in West Africa, according to Funke Opeke, chief executive of Nigeria’s Main One Cable Company.
She says high-speed, low-priced, reliable broadband is key in transforming African economies and creating job opportunities.
“When you think of Africa coming into the information age, you think of educational institutions, you think of business opportunities, you think of social awareness, better communication, transparency in government,” says Opeke, a former executive at U.S. telecoms giant Verizon.
