Facebook partners with Liquid to lay 1,243 miles of fiber in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which will connect to the 2Africa cable in 2024
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook's African connectivity push has been mostly subsea so far: the ~$1B 2Africa cable built with China Mobile and others, then an extension to the Middle East and India, and by August 2021 a plan for 35 landings across 26 countries. A 2015 attempt to reach the continent from orbit with Eutelsat never became the backbone; fiber did.
The Liquid deal is the terrestrial missing link: 1,243 miles of overland fiber through the Democratic Republic of the Congo, hooking inland networks into the coastal 2Africa landings in 2024. It also prefigures Google routing its own Umoja cable through the DRC, making the country a contested transit corridor rather than a dead end.
First-order effects
- Liquid becomes the operator of a national-scale DRC backbone funded by Facebook, converting 2Africa's coastal capacity into reach that actually terminates where users live.
Second-order effects
- Co-investors China Mobile and MTN Group get fuller utilization of their cable landings without funding the last mile themselves, while rival carriers in Central Africa face a competitor whose transport costs are subsidized by a platform.
Third-order effects
- With Google's Umoja route also crossing the DRC, the country shifts from connectivity backwater to the chokepoint where US platforms compete to carry African traffic — and hyperscaler-funded fiber, not satellite schemes like the earlier Eutelsat bet, becomes the default model.
The trend: Platform companies are extending buyer-funded infrastructure from submarine cables inland, owning the full path from landing station to user rather than leasing it from telcos.