Telecoms network operator Paratus Botswana announced on Wednesday it has started work on lighting a new fibre route – billed as the “SADC Highway” – that will connect Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The SADC Highway is planned to run between Gaborone, Botswana and Livingstone, Zambia, passing through Zimbabwe. The fibre network will deliver up to 11 Tbps of potential new capacity to Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The SADC Highway will also be integrated into the Paratus BKF (Botswana Kalahari Fiber) route completed earlier this year that connects Botswana to Swakopmund, Namibia, which hosts one of the landing stations of the Equiano cable that runs off the West African coast from Cape Town to Lisbon.
Paratus said the SADC Highway will provide not only critical redundancy for existing routes through South Africa, but also an alternative east-west route via its interconnection with the BKF fibre link, which also interconnects with another recently completed Paratus fibre route to the Teraco Data Center in Johannesburg.
The first section of the SADC Highway in Botswana – which runs between Gaborone and Plumtree – spans around 500 km and is scheduled for completion in February 2025.
Shawn Bruwer, country MD of Paratus Botswana, said the SADC Highway is expected to drive improved rural network coverage as smaller providers capitalise on the reduced cost per megabit resulting from the initiative.
“This is an attractive new route for Botswana as well as southern Africa,” he said in a statement. “It is eagerly awaited, as witnessed by several operators already purchasing capacity.”
The project marks Paratus Botswana’s fourth fibre route, after two into South Africa and one into Namibia.
