Russian media Sputnik reported that the U.S. and China are competing on building a submarine Internet cable system for the African countries. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during his visit to Africa that the U.S. was raising money to build such a cable network to connect Africa to the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe. This will be one of the first projects under the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) initiative, which was offered by the G7 to counter China’s expansion.
On the other hand, China has started its own “Peace” cable project, which starts from Pakistan, then moves to the East African, Africa continent, and then to Europe. The second phase of the project will connect South Africa and Singapore.
China has provided a lot of capital to build telecom infrastructure in Africa. These network projects have established Chinese companies’ dominance in Africa, especially Huawei and ZTE. Huawei has built or is building millions of digital processing centers and offered cloud computing services in many African countries, including Zimbabwe, Senegal, Zambia, Togo, Tanzania, Mozambique, Mali, and Madagascar.
Sputnik quoted a Russian expert who predicted that China will win the competition against the U.S.
Source: Sputnik, August 20, 2022
https://sputniknews.cn/20220820/1043236644.html