Liquid upgrades Kenya-Uganda fiber route

Pan-African digital infrastructure provider Liquid Intelligent Technologies, a business of Cassava Technologies, has upgraded its 1,300km fiber route that connects Kenya's east coast city of Mombasa to Busia on the Ugandan border.

Liquid stated that the enhancements to the current route between Kenya and Uganda offer increased multi-terabit capacity and improved resilience.

It said that the upgrades will boost digital connectivity and provide more efficient and reliable regional connectivity for several other East African nations.

Liquid added that the expansion enables it to provide its customers with 99.99% uptime availability of services between Mombasa and the Ugandan border.

"The improved connectivity provided by this route, complementing our existing routes to the Uganda border, will support critical business sectors across the region, providing reliable, high-capacity networks essential for digital transformation and economic development," said Adil El Youssefi, CEO of Liquid Intelligent Technologies: Rest of Africa.

Liquid's African fiber connections

According to Liquid, Kenya is becoming a prominent digital and connectivity hub in East Africa, with several undersea cable providers anchoring at the port of Mombasa.

The company added that this new route complements its existing terrestrial fiber routes, rapidly expanding data traffic and further boosting the region's connectivity capabilities.

Liquid said that with over 110,000km of fiber networks, it remains committed to enabling a connected Africa that fuels innovation, drives economic growth, and fosters socio-economic development.

The enhancements to the current route between Kenya and Uganda offer increased multi-terabit capacity and improved resilience. (Source: Image by freepik).

This latest fiber upgrade comes as the company continues to expand its routes on the African continent.

The group's scalable connectivity platform, Liquid Dataport, launched its fiber route connecting Mombasa in Kenya to Muanda on the west coast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in June 2023.

Parent company Cassava Technologies has also been expanding in other technological areas on the continent.

Just last month, the company launched a dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) business unit, Cassava AI.

In July 2024, the group's data center business, Africa Data Centres, announced that it was expanding its data center facility in Cape Town, South Africa, to add another 6MW of IT load, effectively doubling its current capacity in the city.

In June 2024, to meet the growing demand for cloud computing services in South Africa, Africa Data Centers announced plans to expand its data center capacity using a 2 billion South African rand (US$112 million at the time) financing solution arranged by Rand Merchant Bank (RMB).

In March 2024, Cassava's other business unit, Liquid C2, collaborated with Google Cloud and AI company Anthropic to deliver advanced cloud and cybersecurity solutions as well as generative AI (GenAI) capabilities to businesses across Africa.

That deal built on a previous partnership with Google Cloud, which was announced in November 2023 at Africa Tech Festival in Cape Town, South Africa.

In April 2023, Cassava Technologies pledged to invest a total of R4.5 billion (US$249 million at the time) in South Africa through its business units – Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Africa Data Centres and Distributed Power Africa.

— Matshepo Sehloho, Associate Editor, Connecting Africa