Facebook announced its plans to construct a whopping 37,000-kilometre undersea Internet cable through a recent and detailed blog post. The tech giant has undertaken the initiative in order to hopefully increase the continent’s overall internet connectivity.

According to the blog post, the cable will be “nearly equal to the circumference of the Earth” and will interconnect 23 countries across Africa, the Middle East and Europe once complete.

The continent of Africa is home to approximately 1.3 billion residents, yet it is one of the “least connected” regions in the world, the post mentions. “We are committed to bringing more people online to a faster internet — and with 3.5 billion people globally unconnected, there is still a lot to do,” said Facebook.

The project, dubbed ‘2Africa,’ reportedly costs nearly $1 billion USD and will offer about three times the total network capacity of all the other cables currently serving Africa.

“2Africa is being completed as part of our efforts toward an open and inclusive internet ecosystem, which is a vital part of the continent’s digital economic growth,” Facebook stated. “The first subsea cable system to seamlessly connect East and West Africa across a single open system, 2Africa will enable new avenues of communication from coast to coast.”