IHS Nigeria, a subsidiary of the IHS Towers group, announced on Monday it has formed a strategic partnership with Jaza Energy to deploy solar power hubs at 250 towers in underserved communities across Nigeria.

Kenya's ICT Authority has reportedly launched an ambitious US$2.4 billion project to reduce digital inequality, modernise business processes, and improve the country's digital landscape. But this isn’t the only digital transformation initiative announced in East Africa in recent weeks, as the Eastern Africa Regional Digital Integration Project may soon be rolled out.

A reminder that in large parts of Africa internet connectivity is not always guaranteed comes from PalmPay, a financial platform with over 30 million users on its smartphone app in Nigeria. PalmPay has announced the launch of its USSD code, a service that offers Nigerians an additional way to manage their finances without the need for internet connectivity.

The National Communications Authority of Somalia (NCA) partnered with the International Finance Corporation to prepare new regulations for submarine cable landings aimed at bolstering Somalia’s connectivity sector.

Cassava Technologies’ African tech business Liquid Intelligent Technologies announced on Wednesday it has upgraded its 1,300-km fibre route in Kenya that connects the coastal city of Mombasa to Busia on the Ugandan border.

Regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has introduced a device management system (DMS). The NCC DMS is described as a comprehensive central equipment identity register (CEIR) aimed at managing and regulating mobile devices accessing the country’s communication networks.

Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), a state corporation that transports, stores and delivers petroleum products to consumers, but that also has a network infrastructure license, says it has onboarded a leading Tier III internet service provider (ISP), Syokinet Solutions, to activate 1.6 terabits per second (Tbps) data capacity on KPC’s fibre optic cable which runs from Mombasa to Nairobi.

Africa Mobile Networks (AMN) said on Monday that it has connected more than 100 rural base stations in Nigeria to Starlink’s LEO satellite network, which has resulted in a 45% boost in traffic on those sites.

In a rather unusual turn of events, a Kenyan lobby group has apparently filed a lawsuit against operator Safaricom, along with regulator the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), and Kenya’s Competition Authority, demanding that they allow satellite operator Starlink access to the Kenyan market.

MTN Group’s board publicly backed CEO Ralph Mupita after an independent investigation found no evidence to support allegations of misconduct made by executives at the operator.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant has been a highly influential metric in the technology sector for over ten years. As an ostensibly objective analysis of market competitors, the majority of businesses factor it into their decision-making, so its impact on the sector’s competitive landscape is evident.

Two recent deals in Sierra Leone and Malawi underline the continuing role of Chinese telecommunications in general, and tech giant Huawei in particular, in the ongoing digital development of the African market.

The Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) for Sudan reports that it has installed a new dedicated subsea fibre connection in Port Sudan to boost internet connectivity for humanitarian operations in the war-torn country.

Two positive announcements for Nigerian connectivity have made headlines in the past week – one from pan-African operator Airtel Africa’s recently established fibre unit, Telesonic, and one from Hotspot Network Limited, a leading last-mile connectivity and telecom tower operator in Nigeria.

Not for the first time, officials in Mauritania have targeted mobile operators for alleged failure to provide a service of acceptable quality.

The World Health Organization found there is no link between brain and head cancer from use of mobile phones or being situated close to mobile towers.

Guinea's Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and the Digital Economy (MPTEN) reportedly plans to interconnect the country’s national fibre optic network with the network of Côte d'Ivoire in yet another move to boost its international capacity.

International money transfer operator Sasai Money Transfer has announced that it has partnered with Airtel Money, the payments division of operator Airtel, to expand what it describes as its revolutionary offer of free remittances to more African markets, this time targeting Uganda.

The government of Mauritius has launched a new scheme under which citizens aged 18 to 25 years are eligible to get free mobile internet services as part of a government drive to prepare the younger generation for the country’s digital future.

Burkina Faso is planning to extend mobile and internet services to 1,000 remote areas over the next three years. These areas, known as ‘white zones’, are regions without access to telephony and internet services.

Orange Liberia and ZTE said on Thursday they have successfully completed a project to build new base station sites in rural areas across the country that they say significantly enhances network coverage in those areas.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has set 14 September 2024 as the final registration date for subscriber identification module (SIM) subscribers, just under four years since the country’s SIM registration procedure began.

There’s been a flurry of African news from Starlink – satellite communications company SpaceX’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet service – in recent days, culminating with this week’s announcement that Botswana has granted an operating licence to the service.

Bayobab Kenya, part of Bayobab Group, the digital infrastructure business arm of MTN Group, announced on Tuesday the completion of a terrestrial fibre network connecting Mombasa to Uganda via the border cities of Malaba and Busia.

iColo, which designs, builds, and operates state of- the-art carrier-neutral data centres in Kenya and Mozambique, has announced a significant expansion of its renewable energy initiatives with the installation of solar panels at its facilities in Kenya.

Kenyan telco Safaricom has reportedly written a letter to the Communications Authority of Kenya complaining that LEO satellite operator Starlink is a threat to the telecoms market and should be required to partner with local operators rather than compete with them.

Nokia has announced that it is further strengthening its partnership with 4G and 5G network-as-a-service (NaaS) operator Next-Gen InfraCo (NGIC) by building a 5G mobile core network.

Airtel Nigeria says it has successfully set up a satellite dish in Lagos for Eutelsat OneWeb’s LEO satellite broadband service, which it says will be used to bring high-speed internet to remote areas.

The question of whether over-the-top (OTT) services need to pay for the infrastructure they use has come up again – this time in South Africa, where an industry organisation wants digital content and service providers to help pay for the roll out and upgrade of network infrastructure .

A second big data centre story this month has come from the Democratic Republic of Congo as it inaugurates a US$30 million data centre from Raxio Group, said to be Africa’s leading carrier-neutral Tier III data centre operator.

Ethio Telecom partnered with financial powerhouse Visa to launch the first Visa digital wallet in Ethiopia, a move the operator claimed modernises remittance and bolster its fintech business.

The Acting Board of the Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA) has signed two major regulations which, it argues, are aimed at enhancing opportunities for many Liberians, including entrepreneurs, and will improve service quality and government revenue.