The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation announced a $155 million equity investment in digital infrastructure company WIOCC, which DFC CEO Ben Black described as the agency's largest-ever equity investment.
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this investment "will help build the next generation of digital infrastructure for Africa's growth , on reliable networks that support American companies seeking to expand in one of the world's most dynamic
On September 1, the African Finance Corporation and Saudi Arabia’s VisionInvest announced a joint investment of $300 million in the group, which they said would support “accelerating the deployment and integration of data centers, expanding the open-access terrestrial fiber footprint in the continent, and strategic investment in new offshore assets.”
Wyeok is headquartered in Johannesburg and operates submarine cables, fiber optic networks and data centers in more than 30 African countries. It operates on an open access and operator neutrality model, meaning it sells network capacity wholesale to any operator or technology company without competing with them for their customers, according to Reuters.
The company states on its official website that it owns more than 115,000 kilometers of terrestrial fiber and more than 200,000 kilometers of submarine cable assets, and that its network reaches more than a thousand locations in 30 African countries.
According to a statement from the African Finance Corporation, its shareholders include African telecommunications companies such as Uganda Telecom, Dalcom Somalia, Djibouti Telecom, Mozambique's Temsel, Zanzibar's Zantel, Botswana's Fiber Networks, Lesotho's Communications Authority, Onatel, Zimbabwe's TelOne, and Kenya Telecom, in addition to the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group and African Capital Alliance.
The investment is part of a US effort to provide alternatives to Chinese technology providers such as Huawei, according to Reuters, which linked it to the "Clean Network" initiative, launched by the Trump administration to purge the telecommunications infrastructure of Chinese technologies.
The deal follows two other US announcements in the sector this month. On September 10, the US Export-Import Bank announced a loan of approximately $100 million to Africell, the only US-owned telecommunications company in Africa. Also this month, Digital Realty and its subsidiary, ICOLO, announced the establishment of a data center in Kenya, according to Reuters.
According to the "Facts and Figures 2025" report issued by the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency specializing in information and communication technologies, only 36% of Africa's population used the internet in 2025, compared to 74% of the world's population.
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