Facebook is working with two of the world's largest telecommunications providers on a large underwater cable that will provide Africa with more fast Internet than before.

As the digital group and its two partners China Mobile and MTN announced on Monday, the cable should now be even wider than originally planned.

The two island states Seychelles and Comoros in the Indian Ocean are now to be connected to the cable system known as “2Africa”.

In addition, the Canary Islands and Angola will be connected and a new connection to Nigeria will be added, according to the statement published on Monday, from which the Bloomberg news agency quoted.

The cable should now have 35 connections in 26 countries.

"Facebook's significant investment in 2Africa builds on several other investments we've made on the continent, including infrastructure investments in South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo," a Facebook spokesperson told Bloomberg.

Facebook and Google behind four out of five deep-sea cables

Facebook and Google are behind about 80 percent of the recent investments in transatlantic submarine cables.

The tech corporations are trying to meet the growing demand for high-speed data transmissions, which can be used for all types of Internet applications, but are of course primarily intended for the corporations' in-house services.

The 2Africa project is part of Facebook's long-cherished plan to lead the race for more reliable and faster internet in Africa.

While desktop computers and notebooks are in short supply in many countries there, smartphones are very common among the 1.2 billion inhabitants.

That is why, for example, many financial transactions are carried out via the mobile phone;

the relevant branch is partly more developed in Africa than in Europe.

Facebook first announced its plans for the underwater cable in May 2020. The group had previously tried to launch a satellite in 2016 to broadcast an Internet signal over the continent. The Space-X rocket that carried the technology, however, exploded before launch during a test.