Africa connectivity future depends on digital trust frameworks as much as fiber corridors, subsea landing stations, and hyperscale data center investment, speakers said during a high-level discussion at GITEX Africa in Marrakech, warning that regulatory alignment will determine whether the continent can convert bandwidth expansion into localized compute ecosystems.
Over the past decade, Africa has significantly expanded international connectivity capacity through new subsea cable systems linking major coastal markets to Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. Yet panelists argued that Africa connectivity future depends on digital trust frameworks capable of supporting cross-border data mobility at cloud scale rather than leaving countries operating as isolated national infrastructure environments.
Bassim Bennai, Nokia’s Head of Marketing and Communications for the Middle East and Africa, said hyperscale investment in African subsea corridors reflects long-term expectations about the continent’s demographic growth, urbanization patterns, and digital consumption trajectory.
“Africa will be the future of humanity,” Bennai said, noting that global infrastructure investors are positioning early across strategic landing corridors connecting African markets to Europe and other global digital routes.
He emphasized that Morocco’s location at the intersection of African and European connectivity systems gives it a structural advantage as a regional gateway market. However, he warned that Africa connectivity future depends on digital trust frameworks that enable secure data movement between jurisdictions rather than fragmented national regulatory environments.
“We need frameworks for trust in data across countries,” he said, highlighting the importance of bilateral agreements and regional cooperation mechanisms supporting cloud-scale interconnection.
Abderrahmane Mounir, Chief Executive Officer of Maroc Data Center, said regional data center operators must increasingly evolve beyond traditional colocation models toward hybrid infrastructure platforms capable of supporting hyperscaler deployments alongside enterprise workloads.
“We are not only a colocation provider,” Mounir said, describing a shift toward integrated service delivery across multiple infrastructure layers including interconnection, compute environments, and managed services.
He added that Africa connectivity future depends on digital trust frameworks linking subsea landing capacity to domestic compute infrastructure through coordinated policy alignment and sustained enterprise demand growth.
Ouassim El Arroussi, Director of B2B Development at INWI, said reducing infrastructure deployment costs across the connectivity value chain remains essential if Morocco is to consolidate its position as a regional digital hub.
While operators are already sharing infrastructure to reduce capital expenditure, he noted that additional reforms are needed around rights-of-way policies, interconnection frameworks, and traffic localization incentives.
“Most of the traffic today is not local,” he said, pointing to the importance of internet exchange points and domestic application ecosystems in strengthening national digital value retention.
Mohamed Bennis, B2B Sales Director at Orange, said telecom operators continue expanding enterprise connectivity infrastructure closer to customers despite regulatory environments that shape investment flexibility across African markets.
Achile Sarr, Director for Africa at APL Data Center, said Africa’s rapidly expanding subsea cable footprint is creating an opportunity to localize compute infrastructure that has historically been hosted outside the continent.
“Data is the new oil,” Sarr said, arguing that African countries must increasingly retain and process domestic data within regional infrastructure ecosystems rather than depend entirely on external platforms.
He added that Africa connectivity future depends on digital trust frameworks capable of linking subsea systems, terrestrial corridors, and carrier-neutral data centers into integrated infrastructure environments supporting artificial intelligence workloads.
As governments across the continent develop national cloud strategies and sovereign data policies, panelists concluded that countries most likely to emerge as regional digital hubs will be those able to combine infrastructure expansion with trusted regulatory coordination enabling cross-border cooperation at scale.
