In a move that should lead to increased efficiency and dependable regional connectivity, technology company Liquid Intelligent Technologies has launched two new completely redundant terrestrial fiber optic links, connecting Kenya to Ethiopia and Zambia to Malawi.
The fiber connection between Kenya and Ethiopia, which spans more than 1,000 kilometers, provides access to Nairobi’s data centers and cloud services for Ethiopian businesses, keeping their data on the continent.
The cross-border 711 km link between Zambia and Malawi, which offers a direct connection to South African content caches and data centers, further supports this interconnection.
According to Liquid Rest of Africa CEO Adil El Youssefi, businesses in Kenya and Ethiopia are quickly adopting digital technology, and this new connection will facilitate commerce and investment between these two outstanding countries in our region.
“Liquid Kenya sees the digital superhighway initiative of the Kenya Kwanza Government as the catalyst for this growing demand, and this 1000 km of freshly lit fiber is our first contribution to the private sector investment into this flagship project,” the company says.
With a capacity of four gigabytes per second, Liquid’s new link connects Nairobi and Mega, a town in southern Ethiopia, in collaboration with the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) and Ethiopia Electric Power (EEP).
The Kenya-Ethiopia route will now have a carrier-grade connection, complementing the current terrestrial links across this border, according to Liquid, which helps to quickly increase data traffic on this important route.
The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS), whose 5,500-kilometer subsea cable connects Mombasa to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Seacom are other companies that have built backbone fiber highways on Kenyan soil. Seacom began delivering the subsea cable connecting Kenya and South Africa in 2019.
The national fiber optic cable will be extended by 100,000 kilometers over a five-year period, President William Ruto declared last year. The ICT Cabinet Secretary (CS) later clarified that the government would only be responsible for 52 percent of the project and would leave the remaining work to the private sector.
