Pan-African digital connectivity solutions company MTN GlobalConnect has rebranded as Bayobab to strengthen its commitment to digitally connecting Africa.

In addition, the newly revamped company has partnered with infrastructure investment platform Africa50 to develop the Project East2West initiative, a terrestrial fibre-optic cable network connecting the eastern shores of Africa to those on the continent’s west.

Bayobab forms part of MTN Group’s strategic transformation journey to connect Africa with open next-generation digital solutions through two distinct businesses, Bayobab Fibre and Bayobab Communication Platforms, and its rebrand is the first step in MTN Group’s Ambition 2025 strategy to structurally separate its fibre business, which is targeted for completion by 2024.

“Building the largest and most valuable platforms is part of our Ambition 2025 strategic priorities. The brand change from MTN GlobalConnect to Bayobab reflects the change under way to position the business as a world-class, Africa-focused open-access digital infrastructure platform serving not just MTN but other third parties as customers,” explains MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita.

“Our strategy has borne much fruit, as evidenced by our performance and delivery. We are well positioned to open a significant digital doorway that bridges Africa’s digital divide to connect communities,” says Bayobab Group CEO Frédéric Schepens.

“We will also bring strategic partners into the business over time who will provide skills and capital to support and accelerate the growth of this business,” Mupita continues.

In line with this, Bayobab and its new partner Africa50 are preparing to develop Project East2West, with investments of up to $320-million planned in order to connect ten African countries during 2023, 2024 and 2025, which will contribute to Bayobab reaching MTN Group’s target of having 135 000 km of proprietary fibre over the next three years.

For landlocked African countries, Project East2West will improve latency by almost two-thirds and increase capacity to support high-quality broadband access.

“In this way, it will level the playing field and ensure that everyone has a fair chance to succeed in the digital world,” Mupita points out, noting that the partnership will offer significant improvements in data traffic for Internet service providers, mobile network operators and hyper scalers operating in these countries.

It will also bridge the bottlenecks in global Internet traffic landing in and going out of Africa. It is expected to cut latency by up to 65% on the east-to-west route.

“Africa’s connectivity relies on strategic and global partnerships coming together to build the much-needed large-scale backbone infrastructure to meet the explosive demand for digital services,” says Schepens.

“We are looking forward to Project East2West meeting the connectivity demands to power digital services, bridging the digital divide across Africa and paving the way for the sustainable digital societies of tomorrow.”

As a co-developer, Africa50 is fostering the harmonisation of regional data and security regulations, boosting consumption of local content throughout the region and promoting interregional exchanges and regional economic development.

“Project East2West is a remarkable and transformative project that will step-change Africa’s Internet capacity expansion drive by supporting the growth and development of fourth-generation and fifth-generation,” says Africa50 CEO Alain Ebobissé.

“This is an important project that will have a significant impact on Africa’s quest to make the Internet accessible to most of its growing population. “Partnering with a large Pan-African company like Bayobab and MTN is important to roll out such an impactful cross-border project,” he continues.