WIOCC Group, a pan-African digital infrastructure operator, closed a US$300 million strategic investment on September 1, 2026, following a Shareholder Subscription Agreement signed at the LEAP 2026 technology conference in Riyadh. The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and Saudi Arabian investor Vision International Investment Company (Vision Invest) jointly provided the capital to fuel expansion of the company's carrier-neutral, open-access network footprint.

The funding will concentrate on three strategic areas: accelerating subsea cable deployments, extending terrestrial fiber networks, and consolidating Open Access Data Centres (OADC) to address rising demand for artificial intelligence, enterprise cloud services, and sovereign data hosting across the continent.

Deployment Strategy: Subsea, Fiber and Edge Data Centers

Under Group CEO Chris Wood, WIOCC will deploy the US$300 million to expand its asset base—valued at over US$950 million—across more than 30 African nations. The capital targets three operational layers:

  • Expanding subsea network capacity beyond the existing 200,000 km, which includes major landings on 2AAG, Equiano, 2Africa, and regional coastal branches, to deliver dedicated, unmetered bandwidth between Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
  • Scaling the terrestrial fiber footprint beyond 115,000+ km through cross-border land corridors and Metro-Fibre links that connect landlocked nations and regional enterprise hubs to coastal landing stations.
  • Accelerating Open Access Data Centres deployments in South Africa, Nigeria, and the DRC. Following the acquisition of 7 NTT DATA facilities in South Africa, the funding will drive hyperscale edge consolidation and AI compute readiness.

Strategic Imperatives: Addressing Africa's AI and Connectivity Gaps

The investment arrives as Africa's digital economy faces significant supply-demand imbalances in regional bandwidth and compute infrastructure. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), African internet usage reached 35.7% in 2025, compared to a global average of 73.6%. Expanding open-access subsea and terrestrial backbones is critical to unlock connectivity for the continent's rapidly expanding youth population.

As global cloud providers including AWS, Microsoft, and Google expand AI workloads across Africa, data center capacity requires an estimated US$10 billion to US$20 billion in new investment. The AFC and Vision Invest capital enables African markets to build sovereign digital infrastructure rather than relying entirely on off-continent hosting.

Company Profile: WIOCC Group

Africa's Carriers' Carrier

WIOCC Group, founded in 2008, operates as Africa's leading carrier-neutral digital infrastructure provider. The company maintains a wholesale-only model, supplying open-access capacity to telecommunications operators, internet service providers, cloud hyperscalers, and global enterprises across more than 30 African nations.

  • Asset Base: Over US$950 million invested in subsea cables, terrestrial fiber networks, and carrier-neutral OADC data center facilities.
  • Core Subsidiaries: WIOCC (connectivity and subsea assets) and Open Access Data Centres (OADC—hyperscale and edge data center facilities).
  • Geographic Reach: Interconnects key hubs across Sub-Saharan Africa with direct landing links to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
  • Shareholder Structure: AFC and Vision Invest join as new institutional equity partners alongside established shareholders comprising 10 African telecom operators (Telkom Kenya, Djibouti Telecom, Botswana Fibre Networks, TelOne Zimbabwe, Uganda Telecom, Dalkom Somalia, Mozambique Telecom, Zanzibar Telecom, Lesotho Communications Authority, and ONATEL) and institutional investors including the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and African Capital Alliance (ACA).

Pioneering carrier-neutral digital backbones to transform African digital trade and AI competitiveness.