Nairobi — Liquid Dataport, a business of pan-African technology group Cassava Technologies, has connected Mombasa to Johannesburg with the first terrestrial fibre optic cable.

The new route provides countries such as South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the DRC with extra redundancy and connections to numerous data centres and cloud resources.

It also offers an alternative option in the event of a subsea cable outage between Kenya and South Africa.

"This milestone achieved by Liquid Dataport reiterates our commitment to a digitally connected future that leaves no African behind through our continuous investments towards improving and expanding our digital infrastructure," Cassava Technologies President and Group CEO Hardy Pemhiwa said.

"This route will not only bring increased access to high-speed connectivity, but it will also improve lives and allow businesses to create and sustain millions of jobs," Hardy added.

The exponential demand for connectivity directly results from the increasing adoption of digital technologies by enterprises across the continent.

Consequently, service providers and international carriers like Liquid Dataport are investing in new technologies to meet growing demand.

"This is the first terrestrial-only cable connecting Mombasa to Johannesburg via DRC," Liquid Dataport CEO David Eurin stated.

"With this new route, we can provide our existing and future customers access to an intelligent network with increased resilience and low latency," the CEO said.

"It not only provides redundancy but was designed to provide additional capacity to the landlocked countries on the route with direct access to cloud resources on the African continent and beyond."

This route offers hyperscalers, enterprises, and wholesale carriers' direct connectivity to data centres in Johannesburg and Nairobi.