South Africa’s Eastern Cape province has been selected as the site of a strategic international connectivity hub.

ITWeb reports that the new digital exchange port is the first of four international switching points that Google is establishing on the continent.

Speaking at the Google Cloud Summit Africa in Johannesburg on 2 July, James Manyika, Google’s senior vice-president for research, labs, technology and society, said the digital exchange port will directly connect Africa to Australia through the planned Umoja subsea cable as well as support a new subsea link to India.

Manyika said the investment would ‘give South African innovators and businesses the connectivity solutions and compute power they need’.

The project is part of Google’s broader $1 billion-plus infrastructure investments on the continent.

‘The four planned digital exchange ports will help create a more resilient African internet ecosystem by improving regional and international connectivity, while supporting the continent’s accelerating adoption of cloud computing and artificial intelligence,’ he said.

7 July 2026
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