NAIROBI: A delay in building a submarine cable that would drastically lower telecommunication costs in Africa is creating major divisions, and casting doubt on the continent’s ability to implement cross-border infrastructure projects, analysts say.
African leaders agreed to build the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) in 2004 under the 53-member African Union’s programme, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
The planned 9,900 km EASSy cable is expected to run undersea from Durban in South Africa to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa at an estimated cost of $280 million.
The cable is expected to provide the region with high bandwidth connectivity with the rest of the world at low costs.
It could cut Internet costs from $15,000 per megabyte to as little as $500 over five years. Internet traffic in most of Africa travels over slow satellite connections.
NEPAD officials spearheading the project jointly with the region’s telecoms operators say it would be ready by 2008.
But despite assurances by organisers, some African countries, tired of poor services and in a rush to cash in on the lucrative call centres industry, are not convinced.
Kenya, frustrated by delays and arguments over who would run the cable, last month announced it would build its own cable, annoying critics who said it would scupper existing plans. “Countries like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania need a cost effective international access and they need it not tomorrow, not the day after, but today,” Richard Hurst, telecoms analyst at BMI TechnKnowledge in South Africa, told Reuters.
“The thing about EASSy is the delay, that has caused frustrations. NEPAD will have to unblock the frustration.”
NEPAD is hoping to put the project back on track at a two-day meeting of ministers from eastern and southern Africa in Johannesburg. It hopes the ministers will approve a protocol to kickstart the project.
NEPAD, which is overseeing other big-budget regional projects such as gas pipelines, roads and railways, attributed the delay to initial difficulties in raising debt. The World Bank and other financiers have agreed to fund the project.
“Although the implementation has suffered a small delay, construction of the cable should be completed during 2008,” Henry Chasia, the chief executive of NEPAD e-Africa, the information and telecommunication arm of NEPAD, told Reuters.
More than 30 African and international operators have signed the memorandum of understanding for the EASSy cable.
Following expert advice, NEPAD has set up special purpose vehicles to own, develop, operate and maintain the submarine cable, and another to run a terrestrial network.
Powerful Kenya accuses South Africa, Africa’s biggest economy, of trying to dominate the special purpose vehicle and planning to use its pension fund to pay for the project.
The disagreement is partly to blame for the delay.
“We could not agree on the financing model and ... on a proposal by South Africa that we form an intergovernmental agency which would have a golden share in the special purpose vehicle,” Bitange Ndemo, Kenya’s permanent secretary at the Ministry of Information and Communication, told Reuters.
He said Kenya was not completely pulling out of the EASSy project but wanted to build a cable to Mombasa, in case the EASSy one is delayed further.
NEPAD’s Chasia, a Kenyan, defended South Africa saying it supported a model where all countries are treated equally.
