Nigeria joins Uhurunet, Kenya to decide

By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent

Cape Town, 02 Jul 2008

Nigeria has joined the Uhurunet undersea cable initiative and Kenya's participation is being finalised, trade and industry minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said yesterday.

He made the announcement during a media briefing on behalf of the economic cluster of ministries. This includes, among others, his department and the Department of Communications (DOC) and the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE). Mpahlwa also touched on several other ICT issues.

Mpahlwa could not elaborate on Nigeria's participation in Uhurunet and the DOC had not responded to queries by the time of publication.

Uhurunet is the DOC-championed project to lay a fibre optic ring around the African continent and is an outgrowth of the Nepad Broadband ICT Network. This, in turn, grew out of the original Eassy (East African Submarine Cable System) initiative from which the DOC has since decided to divorce itself.

Privately funded Seacom, which is building its own undersea cable on the east coast, is a totally separate initiative. It is the most far advanced of all the projects and is scheduled to become operational in June 2009.

Earlier this year, government indicated Broadband Infraco would be its undersea cable project of choice and has already allocated R600 million towards it. However, the DOC's Uhurunet initiative was given a nod of approval, but no actual funding has been allocated to it.

Mpahlwa also stated the DPE's project Broadband Infraco has secured its manufacturing slots with prospective suppliers, although these were not divulged. Only two international companies, Tyco and Alcatel Lucent, are known to have the capacity to manufacture and build a submarine cable network.

Mpahlwa said the reservation of these slots was to ensure Broadband Infraco would have its African West Coast Cable ready in time for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

A source close to Broadband Infraco said the finalisation of the financing arrangements for the state-owned enterprise had still to be completed and that the deadlines looked extremely tight.

"Infraco has to secure the manufacturing slots now because of the limited number of suppliers in the market, and if everything is done exactly to schedule, then meeting the 2010 deadline is possible," the source says.

Mpahlwa stated that both Uhurunet and Broadband Infraco would be completed by 2010. He said the publication of the guidelines for the rapid deployment of electronic communications facilities, and a new policy covering security and prioritising South African and African investment in cables had been finalised.