Africa’s digital transformation continues to gather momentum as WIOCC Group, the continent’s leading open-access digital infrastructure provider, announced the successful acquisition of an additional $65 million in debt financing on December 15, 2025. This marks the company’s third major fundraising round in 2025, bringing total capital raised during the year to over $400 million as the digital infrastructure provider accelerates its expansion across the African continent.
The new facility was secured through sustainability-linked debt financing arranged by a consortium of development finance institutions and investment firms, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Proparco, the Emerging Africa Infrastructure and Asia Infrastructure Fund (EAAIF), and Ninety-One. This substantial investment underscores growing international confidence in Africa’s digital economy and WIOCC’s strategic role in bridging the continent’s connectivity gap.
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Strategic Financing to Drive Continental Expansion
The $65 million financing package represents a critical milestone in WIOCC Group’s ambitious expansion strategy. According to Developing Telecoms, the facility will fund WIOCC Group’s ongoing expansion of connectivity capacity and digital infrastructure across Africa, with particular focus on South Africa, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Samuel Ndungu, Chief Financial Officer of WIOCC Group, emphasized the significance of this latest capital injection: “This new financing underscores the continued confidence of our development finance partners in WIOCC Group’s long-term growth strategy and our role in driving Africa’s digital transformation. The additional capital enables us to further scale our network infrastructure, extend our data centre footprint and enhance the resilience and capacity of our pan-African digital ecosystem.”
The sustainability-linked structure of the debt financing is particularly noteworthy, demonstrating WIOCC’s commitment to environmental responsibility even as it scales operations. TechCentral reports that the financing was arranged through a sustainability-linked debt facility, with pricing potentially tied to the company’s performance on key environmental metrics, including energy efficiency improvements and green building certifications for its data centres.
Chris Wood, CEO of WIOCC Group, articulated the company’s vision for the capital deployment: “This additional financing represents another significant step forward in advancing the resilient, scalable and open-access digital infrastructure required to support Africa’s growth. It strengthens our ability to execute on our long-term vision, expand our hyperscale network and data centre footprint, and continue building the continent’s most open, interconnected digital ecosystem.”
Development Finance Partners Demonstrate Long-Term Commitment
The involvement of major development finance institutions in this funding round reflects a strategic recognition of digital infrastructure as a critical enabler of economic growth across Africa. The IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has been a long-standing partner and investor in WIOCC, providing both financial capital and technical expertise to support the company’s evolution.
Sarvesh Suri, Regional Industry Director for Infrastructure and Natural Resources, Africa, at IFC, highlighted the importance of the financing structure: “IFC is proud to deepen its long-standing partnership with WIOCC Group as they scale Africa’s digital infrastructure. Through a blend of USD and ZAR financing, we are supporting WIOCC Group in optimising its capital structure, mitigating currency risk, and accelerating investments in resilient, open-access networks.”
This dual-currency approach is particularly significant for a pan-African infrastructure operator. By structuring the facility across both US dollars and South African rand, the IFC is helping WIOCC optimize its capital structure and mitigate foreign exchange risk—a persistent challenge for companies operating across multiple African currencies and regulatory environments.
Françoise Lombard, CEO of Proparco, emphasized the agency’s long-standing commitment to WIOCC: “The AFD Group has been supporting WIOCC Group since its inception back in 2007. Proparco is very proud to reinforce the long-standing partnership with this flagship African player at a time when it has successfully evolved into a diversified digital infrastructure platform.”
Lombard further explained Proparco’s strategic rationale: “By supporting WIOCC’s expansion across terrestrial fibre, submarine cables and open-access data centres, Proparco is helping strengthen a leading network that carries an important part of Africa’s internet traffic. This new financing, arranged alongside IFC and Ninety-One, will contribute to accelerating resilient, energy-efficient connectivity solutions in markets where reliable digital services are essential for economic transformation.”
Puleng Pitso, Investment Specialist at Ninety-One, the fund manager for EAAIF, underscored the broader developmental impact: “Digital connectivity is one of the most powerful enablers of economic growth in Africa. By expanding access to high-speed internet, we are unlocking opportunities for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and industries to thrive in the digital economy. EAAIF and Ninety One’s investment in WIOCC Group will help strengthen the foundations for inclusive growth, job creation and innovation across the continent.”
Building on a Foundation of Over $750 Million in Infrastructure Investment
Since its inception in 2008, WIOCC Group has deployed more than $750 million in digital infrastructure across the African continent. This substantial investment has fundamentally transformed the cost, reliability, and nature of communications infrastructure, creating what the company describes as Africa’s most comprehensive open-access digital ecosystem.
The company’s infrastructure footprint is impressive in its scale and scope. WIOCC operates an extensive network spanning more than 75,000 kilometres of terrestrial fibre and over 200,000 kilometres of submarine fibre-optic cable, connecting more than 550 locations across 30 African countries. This represents one of the most extensive privately-owned telecommunications networks on the continent.
WIOCC’s strategic positioning extends beyond traditional terrestrial networks. The company is a key investor and partner in several major subsea cable systems linking Africa to global internet infrastructure. These include critical systems such as EASSy (Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System), WACS (West Africa Cable System), and Equiano, where WIOCC serves as both a fibre-pair investor and landing partner in Lagos, Nigeria.
Most notably, WIOCC is a significant partner in 2Africa, the world’s longest subsea cable system, which recently completed its core infrastructure. Spanning over 45,000 kilometres, 2Africa connects 33 countries and regions across Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia, with a design capacity of 180Tbps. This massive infrastructure project represents a transformative moment for African connectivity, as it is the first cable to continuously link Africa’s east and west coasts within a single integrated system.
Open Access Data Centres: Meeting Africa’s Growing Digital Demand
A critical component of WIOCC’s expansion strategy is its Open Access Data Centres (OADC) subsidiary, which operates a growing portfolio of facilities across key African markets. The latest financing will enable OADC to expand its footprint significantly, addressing what industry analysts describe as a severe supply-demand imbalance in African data centre capacity.
According to market research, the Africa data centre construction market was valued at $1.26 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $3.06 billion by 2030, rising at a compound annual growth rate of 15.94%. This explosive growth is being driven by several converging factors: the rapid expansion of mobile internet usage, the increasing adoption of cloud services by African enterprises, the growth of content streaming, and the emergence of data-intensive applications including artificial intelligence.
Despite this rapid growth in demand, Africa still accounts for less than 1% of global data centre capacity, even as mobile data usage on the continent increases by approximately 40% annually. This stark imbalance presents both a challenge and an enormous opportunity for infrastructure providers like WIOCC.
The company’s data centre strategy is built on the principle of open access—a business model that allows multiple telecommunications operators, cloud providers, and enterprises to co-locate their equipment in WIOCC facilities on equal, non-discriminatory terms. This approach is critical for fostering competition and reducing the cost of digital services in African markets where incumbent telecommunications operators have historically maintained tight control over infrastructure.
Earlier in 2025, WIOCC announced plans for substantial investments in its data centre operations. In one significant development, the company revealed a $240 million investment plan through OADC aimed at expanding its Lagos data centre to a 24-megawatt capacity by 2027. Lagos, as Nigeria’s commercial capital and Africa’s most populous city, represents a critical hub for digital services across West Africa.
The Lagos expansion is emblematic of WIOCC’s broader strategy: investing heavily in key metropolitan areas that serve as regional economic centres, while simultaneously extending connectivity into secondary cities and underserved markets. This dual approach—combining hyperscale facilities in major cities with edge data centres in emerging markets—is designed to create a comprehensive, interconnected digital ecosystem across the continent.
Addressing Africa’s Connectivity Challenges Through Infrastructure Investment
The imperative for expanded digital infrastructure in Africa cannot be overstated. The continent faces unique connectivity challenges that stem from a combination of geographic, economic, and regulatory factors. As highlighted in recent industry analysis, the ability to meet demand for sophisticated, scalable infrastructure is at risk of lagging behind the growing digital footprint of a predominantly young demographic.
Africa’s demographics present both opportunity and urgency. With a median age of approximately 19 years—compared to 38 years in Europe and 31 years globally—the continent has a massive population of digital natives who are driving exponential growth in data consumption. This youthful population is increasingly accessing services through smartphones, consuming video content, engaging with social media, and participating in the digital economy as both consumers and creators.
However, translating this demographic dividend into sustained economic growth requires substantial investment in underlying infrastructure. The terrestrial fibre network that connects submarine cable landing stations to inland population centres remains woefully inadequate in many African countries. According to industry data, the continent had an estimated 1.3 million kilometres of operational terrestrial fibre-optic transmission networks as of 2024—an increase from approximately 1 million kilometres in 2019, but still far short of what is required to serve Africa’s 1.5 billion people across 54 countries.
The challenge is particularly acute for landlocked countries, which must rely on terrestrial connections to submarine cables landing in coastal nations. Countries like Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Malawi face higher connectivity costs and lower reliability due to their geographic position. WIOCC’s open-access terrestrial network model has been specifically designed to address this challenge, providing these landlocked nations with redundant, high-capacity connectivity options.
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Sustainability and Energy Efficiency at the Core of Expansion
One of the most innovative aspects of WIOCC’s latest financing is its sustainability-linked structure. This financing mechanism ties interest rates or other loan terms to the company’s achievement of predetermined environmental, social, and governance (ESG) targets. For WIOCC, these targets include improving energy efficiency across its data centre portfolio and achieving EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies) green building certification.
EDGE certification, an innovation developed by IFC, provides a simplified methodology for designing and certifying resource-efficient and zero-carbon buildings. For data centres—which are notoriously energy-intensive facilities—achieving EDGE certification requires implementing sophisticated cooling systems, utilizing renewable energy sources, optimizing server efficiency, and incorporating water conservation measures.
The emphasis on sustainability is not merely a response to investor preferences; it addresses a fundamental constraint facing Africa’s digital infrastructure development: reliable and affordable energy. Many African countries face chronic electricity shortages, with data centres requiring substantial amounts of uninterrupted power that local grids often cannot reliably provide.
WIOCC’s response has been multifaceted. The company is increasingly investing in on-site renewable energy generation, particularly solar power, which is abundant across much of Africa. The company is also implementing advanced cooling technologies that reduce energy consumption, and deploying battery storage systems and backup generators to ensure continuous operations even during grid outages.
This focus on energy efficiency and renewable power has significant implications beyond environmental stewardship. By reducing reliance on expensive and unreliable grid power, WIOCC can lower its operating costs and offer more competitive pricing to customers. Additionally, by demonstrating that large-scale data infrastructure can operate sustainably in African conditions, WIOCC is helping to attract other international investors who might otherwise be deterred by concerns about energy availability.
A Remarkable Year of Capital Formation and Strategic Partnerships
The $65 million sustainability-linked financing announced in December represents WIOCC’s third major capital raise in 2025, underscoring the company’s ambitious growth trajectory and its success in attracting diverse sources of investment capital. Earlier in the year, WIOCC secured a $129 million partnership with Laser Light, a transaction that expanded the company’s international connectivity options and brought additional technical expertise into its operations.
These successive capital raises reflect a maturing capital markets environment for African digital infrastructure. Development finance institutions like IFC and Proparco have long been active in this space, providing catalytic capital that helps de-risk projects and attract commercial investors. However, the involvement of private investment firms like Ninety-One and specialized infrastructure funds like EAAIF demonstrates that commercial capital is increasingly viewing African digital infrastructure as an attractive investment opportunity.
This evolution in the investor base is critical for sustaining the pace of infrastructure deployment that Africa requires. While development finance institutions play a vital catalytic role, the scale of investment needed to close Africa’s digital divide—estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars—can only be mobilized by attracting substantial commercial capital. WIOCC’s track record of successful capital raises and operational execution is helping to demonstrate the viability of this asset class to mainstream institutional investors.
Regulatory and Policy Considerations
The success of infrastructure providers like WIOCC depends not only on access to capital but also on supportive regulatory environments. African governments are increasingly recognizing that digital connectivity is essential for economic development, and many are implementing policies to encourage infrastructure investment.
Several African governments have enacted data localization laws, requiring that certain categories of data be stored within national borders. While these regulations present challenges for multinational technology companies, they create opportunities for domestic and Pan-African infrastructure providers like WIOCC that can offer local data centre capacity.
Additionally, many African countries have established special economic zones (SEZs) with tax incentives designed to attract data centre investment. Kenya’s Ministry of Information, Communications, and the Digital Economy, for instance, partnered with Microsoft and G42 in May 2024 for a $1 billion digital investment initiative, demonstrating the scale of public-private partnership opportunities emerging across the continent.
However, regulatory challenges persist. Spectrum allocation for wireless connectivity, right-of-way permissions for fibre deployment, and licensing requirements for telecommunications services remain inconsistent across African countries. Regional policy harmonization is increasingly recognized as essential for creating an enabling environment for pan-African infrastructure operators.
The Broader Context: Africa’s Digital Infrastructure Revolution
WIOCC’s latest financing announcement should be understood within the broader context of Africa’s digital infrastructure revolution. The continent is experiencing a fundamental transformation in its connectivity landscape, driven by several converging trends.
First, submarine cable capacity serving Africa has exploded in recent years. As recently as 2008, only three fibre-optic submarine cables connected the African continent to the global internet. Today, there are over 30 operational submarine cable systems, with several more under construction. This dramatic expansion has fundamentally changed the economics of international connectivity, reducing wholesale bandwidth costs by orders of magnitude.
Second, major global technology companies are making substantial investments in African infrastructure. Companies like Google, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services are not only building data centres but also investing directly in submarine cable systems. The 2Africa cable, in which Meta is a lead investor and WIOCC is a key partner, exemplifies this trend.
Third, African telecommunications operators and technology companies are increasingly investing in digital infrastructure. Companies like MTN are building data centres to reduce dependence on foreign cloud providers and keep digital value chains on the continent. This represents an important evolution from simply licensing infrastructure built by others to directly investing in and controlling critical digital assets.
Fourth, the emergence of 5G wireless technology is creating new demands for data centre and fibre infrastructure. The GDP impact of 5G in Sub-Saharan Africa alone is projected to reach $26 billion by 2030. However, 5G networks require dense fibre backhaul and edge computing infrastructure to deliver on their performance promises, creating additional demand for the types of assets that WIOCC deploys.
The Path Forward: Challenges and Opportunities
Despite remarkable progress, significant challenges remain in Africa’s digital infrastructure development. Energy costs and reliability continue to be major constraints in many markets. The shortage of skilled technical personnel to design, build, and operate sophisticated infrastructure is a persistent challenge. High construction costs, often driven by the need to import specialized equipment and the logistical challenges of building in remote areas, can make projects economically marginal.
Currency volatility presents an ongoing financial risk for infrastructure operators that incur costs in multiple currencies but may earn revenues predominantly in local currencies subject to depreciation. Regulatory uncertainty in some markets can delay projects or create unexpected costs. And in some regions, security concerns related to terrorism or civil conflict make infrastructure deployment dangerous and insurance prohibitively expensive.
However, these challenges are increasingly being met with innovative solutions. Modular data centre designs are reducing construction time and costs while improving energy efficiency. Renewable energy, particularly solar power combined with battery storage, is providing reliable, cost-effective power for data centres. Training programs are developing local technical capacity. And increasingly sophisticated risk management tools, including political risk insurance and currency hedging instruments, are helping infrastructure operators manage financial risks.
For WIOCC specifically, the path forward involves continuing to execute on its core strategy: deploying open-access infrastructure that serves the entire digital ecosystem, from traditional telecommunications operators to cloud providers to enterprises directly. The company’s carrier-neutral business model—which allows any qualified customer to access its infrastructure on non-discriminatory terms—has been key to its growth, as it enables WIOCC to serve the entire market rather than competing directly with its potential customers.
The company is also well-positioned to benefit from emerging trends in the African digital economy. The growth of African technology startups, which raised record amounts of venture capital in recent years, is creating demand for sophisticated cloud infrastructure and connectivity. The expansion of fintech services, which are transforming financial inclusion across the continent, requires reliable, secure data infrastructure. The growth of e-commerce, digital entertainment, and online education all drive demand for the services that WIOCC’s infrastructure enables.
Digital Sovereignty and Local Ownership
An important dimension of WIOCC’s business model is its ownership structure. The company is jointly owned by a consortium that includes African telecommunications operators, the IFC, and African Capital Alliance, a Pan-African private equity firm. This ownership structure, which combines local and international investors, reflects a growing emphasis on African ownership and control of critical digital infrastructure.
Recent analysis has emphasized the importance of African ownership in submarine cables, data networks, and other digital infrastructure for ensuring data sovereignty and enabling the continent to capture more value from its growing digital economy. While foreign investment and expertise remain important, particularly in the early stages of market development, there is increasing recognition that long-term value creation requires African companies and investors to own and control critical infrastructure assets.
WIOCC’s model of combining African and international ownership, with strong African representation in management and on the board, provides a template for balancing the need for international capital and expertise with the imperative for African ownership and control. This approach has enabled the company to access capital from development finance institutions and international investors while maintaining its character as an African company serving African markets.
Looking Ahead: The Next Phase of African Digital Development
As WIOCC deploys the $65 million in new financing, along with capital from earlier 2025 raises, the company is positioning itself for the next phase of Africa’s digital development. This phase will be characterized by several key trends.
First, the build-out of hyperscale data centre capacity in major African cities to support cloud services, content delivery, and enterprise applications. Major cloud providers including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services are all expanding their African presence, and they will require local infrastructure partners like WIOCC to deliver connectivity and co-location services.
Second, the extension of high-capacity connectivity to secondary cities and underserved regions. While the major urban centres of Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg, and Cairo have relatively good connectivity, much of the continent remains underserved. Reaching these markets will require sustained investment in terrestrial fibre networks and creative solutions to make connectivity economically viable in lower-density areas.
Third, the development of edge computing infrastructure to support applications that require ultra-low latency, such as autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, and certain artificial intelligence applications. While these use cases are still emerging in African markets, forward-looking infrastructure providers are beginning to position themselves for this trend.
Fourth, the increasing importance of resilience and redundancy in network design. As African economies become more dependent on digital services, network outages have increasingly severe economic and social consequences. This is driving demand for multiple diverse connectivity paths and geographically distributed data centre capacity.
Conclusion: Building Africa’s Digital Future
WIOCC Group’s successful acquisition of $65 million in sustainability-linked financing represents far more than a single transaction. It is emblematic of the transformation underway in Africa’s digital infrastructure landscape—a transformation characterized by increasing investor confidence, growing recognition of the economic and developmental importance of digital connectivity, and the emergence of capable, well-capitalized African infrastructure companies.
The company’s achievement in raising over $400 million across three separate transactions in 2025 demonstrates both the scale of opportunity in African digital infrastructure and WIOCC’s execution capabilities. The involvement of development finance institutions like IFC and Proparco alongside commercial investors like Ninety-One reflects the maturation of this investment opportunity and the blending of developmental and commercial objectives.
As WIOCC deploys this capital to expand its network infrastructure, extend its data centre footprint, and enhance the resilience and capacity of its pan-African digital ecosystem, it is directly enabling the digital transformation that will shape Africa’s economic future. Every data centre that comes online, every fibre route that is activated, and every redundant connection that is established makes African businesses more competitive, African consumers better served, and African entrepreneurs more able to participate in the global digital economy.
The commitment to sustainability that is embedded in the financing structure reflects an understanding that Africa’s digital infrastructure must be built not just quickly, but responsibly—with attention to energy efficiency, environmental impact, and long-term operational sustainability. This approach is essential for ensuring that the infrastructure built today will serve African communities effectively for decades to come.
WIOCC’s open-access business model, which ensures that all qualified customers can access its infrastructure on non-discriminatory terms, is fostering competition and reducing costs in African telecommunications markets. By serving as neutral infrastructure provider rather than competing directly with telecommunications operators and cloud providers, WIOCC is enabling the entire digital ecosystem to flourish.
As Chris Wood, WIOCC’s CEO, noted, the company remains “steadfast in its commitment to enabling digital inclusion and making an enduring contribution to the development of Africa’s digital economy.” With over $750 million deployed since inception and a clear strategy for deploying hundreds of millions more in the years ahead, WIOCC Group is positioned as a central player in writing the next chapter of Africa’s digital story—a story of connection, opportunity, and transformation.
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By: Montel Kamau
Serrari Financial Analyst
16th December, 2025
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