Work on the Senegal Horn of Africa Regional Express (SHARE) cable is under way. Huawei Marine Networks (HMN), a provider of a submarine-network solutions this week announced the start of work on the SHARE cable, which will extend from West Africa far into the Atlantic Ocean.

The system is said to be the first high-capacity direct link from the African continent to the offshore islands of Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean, some 570 kilometres off the coast of Africa.

The SHARE system is about 720 km long and has a design capacity of 16Tbit/s, using HMN’s submarine communications equipment and solutions. It will connect to Dakar in Senegal and Praia, the capital and largest city of Cape Verde, on the island of Santiago. It is expected to be completed in early 2021.

Cape Verde has not been completely isolated in telecommunications terms before SHARE, however. Relying on Cape Verde’s existing resources of international cables to Europe, South America and other regions, the delivery of the system will introduce new international bandwidth routes to the African continent during its 25-year life cycle. This, says HMN, will greatly improving the total international export bandwidth of Senegal and possibly also of the surrounding regions in West Africa.

HMN adds that the SHARE system will promote the development of Senegal as an ICT hub in West Africa and accelerate the development of the digital economy in the region.

Original article Developing Telecoms