According to foreign media Light Reading, South African long-distance and telecommunications platform wholesaler Bayobab – a subsidiary of MTN Group, the largest telecommunications company in Africa – is laying high-speed low latency optical fibers on the vast African continent.
The company is also a major investor in most of the submarine cables laid on the African continent, including one of the world’s longest submarine cables, the 180Tbit/s 2Africa submarine cable system, which will be put into use next year. So far, the return on these green space investments is promising, with the company’s fiber optic business growing by 15% in the first half of this year.
MTN is the largest telecommunications company in Africa, with 292 million mobile, fintech, and digital service subscribers in six sub Saharan countries. The group’s revenue in the first half of this year was R107.7 billion ($5.7 billion).
The original name of Bayobab was MTN GlobalConnect, and it was renamed Bayobab in May this year. Its new name comes from the unique baobab tree, known as the Tree of Life. Frederic Schepens, CEO of the company, said, “It creates an ecosystem around and within the tree, and I think we reflect this from the perspective of digital infrastructure.”
In 2010, African coastal countries achieved direct fiber optic connectivity to the global internet for the first time, changing the cost and experience of connectivity. But only a limited number of fiber optic lines have been laid to landlocked countries in Africa.
With the support of the regional development bank Africa50, Bayobab is investing $320 million to build three terrestrial fiber optic networks on the African continent, connecting ten countries into three self healing rings.
Schepens stated that Bayobab has been self financing so far, but he acknowledged that the business is “very capital intensive” and needs assistance in terms of funding, and the company is also considering various options. The company is currently only half of its target for 2025, but still promises to invest $500 million in the next two years.