Africa’s digital economy requires infrastructure that can keep pace with the evolving needs of the companies and communities it serves. For businesses operating across the continent, that means connected infrastructure that makes it easier to scale, access capacity and respond to the growing demand for cloud, AI and data services.
This year’s Capacity Europe theme, ‘Convergence in Motion’, was particularly relevant to Africa’s digital infrastructure future. Bayobab, an MTN Group Company, is redefining connectivity in Africa by building an integrated platform designed to power the continent’s digital ambitions.
Bayobab has evolved into a pan-African, open-access digital infrastructure platform that unites terrestrial fibre, subsea cable networks, Low-Earth Orbit satellite, and data centres, into a single, scalable ecosystem. This marks a strategic shift from operating infrastructure assets to delivering an integrated model to support Africa’s accelerating digitalisation. Bayobab, active across 50+ African countries, provides operators, enterprises and hyperscalers with a reliable infrastructure layer to simplify cross-border connectivity and increase speed to market.
When infrastructure seamlessly connects markets, true convergence becomes a reality.
With a proprietary fibre network that currently spans 153,000km, Bayobab provides the scale that forms Africa’s digital backbone. This fibre footprint drives cross-border fibre interconnections, such as at the Zambia-Mozambique border, to strengthen regional integration, and create more efficient data pathways. Bayobab’s partnership with TMCEL also strengthens national and international connectivity in Mozambique, while a 15-year licence in South Sudan supports expansion into an underserved market with significant long-term growth potential.
Bayobab has also completed 100% of the civil works and fibre deployment across the Kenyan and South Sudan segments of the East to West Connectivity Project’s Northern Route 1 Corridor. With 2,038km of optical fibre installed, this project now enters its final optimisation and readiness phase, bringing the corridor closer to service activation.
Locally-hosted infrastructure is essential to Africa’s competitiveness in the AI economy, prompting Bayobab’s strategic partnership with a UAE-based data centre investment platform. Operating as Africa Data Hub Holding Limited, and starting in Nigeria and South Africa, this entity is set to fuel innovation and economic inclusion.
Together, this ecosystem approach creates an end-to-end platform to connect markets and enable digital growth. In a region where infrastructure has historically lagged demand, Bayobab is closing the connectivity gap by building the foundation to transform businesses, develop digital ecosystems and, ultimately, bolster economic growth.
