Chinese Government pledges support for East Africa Information Super Highway (EA-IS) Project

On December 3, 2015, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), ITU and five East African countries (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) signed an Memoradum of Understanding (MOU) to build the China-East Africa Information Super Highway (EA-IS project) in Johannesburg, South Africa at the Summit of the Sino-Africa Cooperation Forum.

The EA-IS project includes the construction of an optical cable backbone network system and a submarine optical cable access system.

The purpose is to build a broadband platform connecting the five countries of East Africa, carrying basic services including voice, data, graphics and Internet access services.

According to the United Nations ESCAP, the project is to be implemented in two phases: (1) building a fibre-optic ring network across Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, and (2) building a fibre-optic ring network connecting the five East African countries and a submarine cable transmission system. In 2017, ITU and MIIT, among others, organized a joint research group and visited the five East African countries.

The report by the joint research group identified an urgent need to build a ring network to interconnect Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, and the three countries signed an agreement to build a fibre-optic ring network.

However, construction of the ring network has been delayed due to "lack of relevant technologies, funds and standards, especially the lack of standards or guidelines for charging and accounting settlement of multi-country terrestrial cable circuits" (ESCAP).

Record ID#52674 is a potential sub-project capturing 459 kilometers of 500 kV DC transmission lines between Ethiopia and Kenya.