Bayobab have ambitious plans to build a fibre network across Africa in an attempt to close the digital divide. Mohammed Aliyu, Chief FibreCo Officer at Bayobab explains.
"Africa is the fastest growing continent in the world and it is a very youthful continent. As such, the youth in Africa will need a lot of connectivity and the digital divide is what we're trying to resolve. We believe that everybody deserves the benefit of being connected digitally.
"We are effectively the fibre backbone in Africa - we create the fibre highways, and everybody builds the digital economy on top of that, such as mobile transactions and tech startups. We are trying to achieve digital inclusion. Creating that fibre backbone also helps improve education and things such as healthcare deliveries.
"People get more economic empowerment, and that way, the whole digital economy in Africa will be turned around. And remember, we're doing all of that whilst also ensuring that we're environmentally friendly. We believe that all the activities we're doing will come together to help rejuvenate the African economy and improve on the GDP of the continent as a whole in the long run. Our priorities are to make sure that we give everybody the benefit of a connected life in Africa.
"And how are we doing that today? We're actually involved in a lot of infrastructure rollouts. We have partnered with Africa50 to invest up to $320 million in building terrestrial fibre highways across 10 African countries which we believe will help us deliver our ambition to connect East and West.
"Bayobab has just secured a licence in Central Africa, Central Africa Republic, which comes with an asset of about 1,050 kilometres of fibre. We've done quite a lot in cases like Zambia as well, where we've provided connectivity to five country borders. We've also been able to connect them successfully to the one of the biggest hubs in South Africa."
Bayobab recently revealed they have been awarded the national long-distance operator license by regulators in Nigeria.
"The licence in Nigeria which means we can facilitate long-distance traffic. It’s very important as Nigeria which is one of the biggest markets as you know - over 200 million people. So we also partner in helping make sure that we fulfill a country's digital ambition in creating the fibre railways into Africa.
"We also have the subsea coming online. So it's not just the subsea cable most are aware of, we're part of 2Africa, which is the longest subsea in the world.
The challenges we face are not different from every other player in every other industry, such as funding, which comes with high-interest rates and the global economic slowdown. Of course, we're also having to contend with some other issues that are not within our control, like power issues.
"Some challenges can be overcome. We would like government regulators to come to the table to enable all these dreams and ambitions we have. They need to come and see that in the long run we are improving the overall GDP of the continent and be able to give us faster licences. There is 54 countries in Africa and different countries have different legislation, some of them are actually far ahead and some of them are still lagging behind. We'll continue to educate them as partners and help them understand in the long run what we're trying to do to is to improve the overall continent.
The next 18 months for us are about ensuring we deliver our commitment to connecting east to west and also to conclude on the fibre asset structural separations in the seven markets we are currently in. They include Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, South Africa, Uganda, and parts of Zambia so that we can have full operations in those places and make sure that we've got an open access fibre. Currently, we've got 108,000 kilometres of fibre used and owned by us, so we want to increase that to 135,000 km by 2025. So that's part of fulfilling our ambition 2025 deliverables."
