Launched by France Telecom as part of an association with telecom operators in participating countries, the ACE cable, which runs from the African Coast to Europe, had Sierra Leone sign a US$15 million loan agreement with China.
Scheduled to be switched on in October, the 17,000-kilometer ACE cable will run from France to South Africa, connecting 23 countries either directly or indirectly and will put in major boost in broadband access.
This comes following a previous funding of US$31 million from the World Bank for their first fibre optic installation. The bank also approved $71.5 million funding for three major projects aimed at boosting ICT infrastructure in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe.
Xu Zhou, Head of Political Affairs at the Chinese embassy in Sierra Leone, said the loan agreement was signed last week on Tuesday.
Zhou added that it was just a signing agreement without too many details, and that the project is to be implemented by a Chinese company named Huawei.
Chinese Ambassador Kuang Weilin said the agreement was part of bilateral and development cooperation between the two countries.
Sierra Leone government, through the Sierra Leone Cable Limited SALCAB, has also announced the existence of international competitive proposals from consultancy services in organizations of good standing to supervise the implementation of the 660km fibre backhaul and Wimax Access Network in the country.
This evaluation process is said to receive a US$28 million loan from the Islamic Development Bank IDB, for the development and deployment of ECOWAS Regional Backbone and e-Governance programme ECOWAN-Sierra Leone.
Founded in 1988, French Telecom is a French company termed as the largest multinational telecommunications provider in Europe, and the second largest in the world. As of 2010, it had 192.7M customers worldwide.
