Bayobab says the Kenyan and South Sudanese stretches of its East-to-West fibre corridor are now fully built, with 2,038km of optical fibre installed and service activation next.
Bayobab, an MTN Group company, made the claim in a blog post on 22 October 2026 written around the Capacity Europe conference theme, “Convergence in Motion”. It said it has completed 100% of the civil works and fibre deployment on the Kenya and South Sudan segments of Northern Route 1 of the East to West Connectivity Project.
A corridor nearing activation
The company said the project is now entering its “final optimisation and readiness phase”, bringing the corridor closer to service activation. It gave no activation date, no customers and no cost.
The post also does not say how the corridor links beyond the 2 segments it names, or who will buy capacity on it.
South Sudan, Mozambique and the wider network
Bayobab said a 15-year licence in South Sudan supports its expansion into what it calls an underserved market. In Mozambique, it cited a partnership with TMCEL, and it pointed to a cross-border fibre interconnection at the Zambia-Mozambique border.
The company says its proprietary fibre network spans 153,000km and is active in more than 50 African countries. Both figures are Bayobab’s own and the post cites no independent audit.
From fibre to a platform
Bayobab described itself as a pan-African, open-access infrastructure platform that combines terrestrial fibre, subsea cables, low-Earth-orbit satellite and data centres. Its pitch to operators, enterprises and hyperscalers is that one integrated platform simplifies cross-border connectivity and speeds time-to-market.
The data centre part runs through Africa Data Hub Holding Limited, the venture with a United Arab Emirates investment platform that Bayobab said will start in Nigeria and South Africa. When MTN announced the venture in August, it disclosed no investment figure, capacity target or timeline, and the new post adds none.
Other pan-African wholesale operators are also pairing fibre with data centres: WIOCC raised $300 million in September to expand both. For Bayobab, the next test is whether the East-to-West corridor goes live, and with whom.
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