Gabon and Congo interconnected by optical fiber

Gabon and Congo are now interconnected to a very high speed internet network, thanks to an optic fiber cable from Libreville to the Congolese city of Pointe-Noire for 1,604 km.

This cable that will open up rural populations was inaugurated on Friday, April 6 in the small Gabonese locality of Bakoumba by the governments of the two countries.

They are students at the public high school Eugene Marcel Amogho of Franceville, 650 km from Libreville. Currently, their experience with the internet is rather disappointing. “Here internet is difficult,” says a student.

“When it rains it penalizes us a lot,” says another.

The announcement of the commissioning of fiber optics gives hope to Christian Dominique Ndjogo Kogno, headmaster of this largest high school in the province of Haut-Ogooue: “The officials in the big cities said to themselves that when we go to Inside we are cut off from the world, but there is no reason. With this optical fiber we remain interconnected and we can exchange as in a global village.”

A Chinese company laid the cable along the Gabonese railway for 1,100 km. On the Congolese side, it took 504 km of cable to reach the Gabonese border. After the cutting of the symbolic ribbon by the ministers of the two countries, Claude Bilie By Nze, Gabonese Minister of the Digital Economy, asked people to wait for telephone operators to invest to have this very high speed connection.

“If there is no operator, no benefits for the people “, he said.

The World Bank, which funded this project, pledged additional funding to connect all Central African countries with optics fibers.