The first Google Cloud data center on the African continent has been up and running since January in Johannesburg, South Africa. Africa's first fiber-optic route to AustraliaGoogle had committed $1 billion in 2022 to driving Africa's digital transformation — including undersea cables for faster internet connections. Anchored in Kenya, the fiber-optic cable will run through Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, from where it will continue along the Indian Ocean bed to Australia. Key players in African internet infrastructure include multinational telecom giants such as MTN (South Africa), Orange S.A. (France), Vodafone Group (UK) and Bharti Airtel (India). Leapfrogging is also taking place in the expansion of internet infrastructure, when high-capacity fiber-optic cables are immediately laid instead of the copper cables that were initially used in the Global North.
