WIOCC hosted the 2nd ASEF/WIOCC Subsea & Digital Infrastructure Summit in Nairobi, gathering industry leaders, faculty and emerging engineers to confront a defining question: how will Africa build — and who will build — its next digital backbone?
Under the theme “Building Africa’s Internet of the Future,” the event, supported by the SubOptic Foundation, ICPC, TESPOK, Nokia and the WIOCC Group, blended technical learning with career pathways, underscoring that the continent’s engineering capacity will determine how fast cloud, subsea, data centre and AI infrastructure scale.
Douglas Njenga, Director, Strategic Affairs and Regulatory, WIOCC opened by situating Africa’s connectivity challenge within accelerating demand for AI computing, cloud storage, and resilient fibre systems. “The future of Africa’s digital backbone will be built by talent that thinks in full clusters and how to connect the entire ecosystem,” he said, setting the tone for a forward-focused agenda.
Verne Steyn, WIOCC/OADC’s Director of Subsea, followed with a candid assessment of submarine cable evolution and the next decade’s engineering demands, arguing that Africa must cultivate home-grown marine talent if it intends to control its digital arteries. Nokia’s Director of Submarine Network Solutions, Afrim Beka, deepened the discussion with an exploration of coherent optics, SDM systems, and backbone design realities.
An industry panel brought operational depth to the narrative, with Dr. Fiona Asonga (TESPOK); Kelvin Mutuma (SEACOM); Patrick Mbogo (LINX Africa); Fred Macharia (VGG), and Sajid Vayani (Icolo.io) debating data center interconnect, carrier economics, peering bottleneck,s and the regulatory inertia slowing interconnection progress.
The summit’s second half shifted into talent readiness, where UNICEF’s Ben Roberts moderated an unfiltered conversation on the skills gap spanning subsea operations, fibre deployment, IXP engineering, and data centre management. The message to young engineers was direct: opportunity is abundant, but capability and curiosity will decide who benefits from it.
Hands-on labs reinforced that point. Participants designed subsea routes, mapped micro-data facilities, simulated network failures, and solved troubleshooting challenges alongside engineers from WIOCC, Nokia, Seacom, and Icolo.io.
By the close, the summit had made its case. Africa’s digital future will not be outsourced – it will be engineered locally. And if the energy in Nairobi was any indication, the next generation is preparing to take the helm.
Ready to dive deeper into the hyperscale revolution impacting Africa?
READ MORE HERE: www.africa.hyperscalers.news
Contact Us:
Email: projects@hyperscalers.news
Phone: +2348109003350
Follow us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, x
