WIOCC secures $300m from AFC and Vision Invest for Africa rollout
WIOCC Group has signed a Shareholder Subscription Agreement with Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and Saudi Arabian infrastructure investor Vision Invest, securing a combined US $300 million to fund its next phase of digital infrastructure build-out across Africa. The agreement was signed at the LEAP 2026 Global Technology exhibition in Riyadh on 1 September 2026.
The capital will support three areas of expansion: accelerating data centre deployment and consolidation, extending WIOCC's open-access terrestrial fibre footprint, and investing in new subsea cable assets. WIOCC already operates across more than 30 African countries, making it one of the continent's most extensive carrier-neutral infrastructure platforms. Existing shareholders include a consortium of African telecoms operators, the International Finance Corporation, and African Capital Alliance.
The deal
Chris Wood, Group Chief Executive Officer of WIOCC Group, said the investment would allow the company to "execute its long-term growth strategy" at a moment when "demand for cloud, AI and digital services accelerates." The company's open-access model means it serves operators, hyperscalers, and enterprise customers without favouring any single downstream carrier, a positioning that has historically attracted development-finance backing.
AFC President and CEO Samaila Zubairu framed the rationale in infrastructure terms: "Fibre, data centres and subsea cables are now essential infrastructure for growth, innovation and AI." Vision Invest's president Omar N. Al-Midani pointed to Africa's demographic trajectory, noting the continent is expected to account for more than a quarter of global population by 2050 as a structural driver of long-run digital demand.
No post-money valuation was disclosed, nor were specific capacity targets, timelines for individual projects, or the split of proceeds between data centre, fibre and subsea programmes.
Market context
Africa's digital infrastructure gap remains substantial. The International Telecommunication Union estimated that only 35.7% of Africa's population used the internet in 2025, against a global average of 73.6%. That gap creates both a commercial opportunity and a policy imperative, attracting development-finance institutions alongside commercially motivated investors.
WIOCC competes in a market that includes pan-African fibre and data centre operators such as Liquid Intelligent Technologies, IHS Towers on the tower side, and a growing set of hyperscaler-backed data centre programmes in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt. The open-access, carrier-neutral model WIOCC operates is increasingly attractive to cloud providers seeking regional points of presence without building proprietary infrastructure. AFC's involvement adds development-finance credibility that can ease regulatory approvals in jurisdictions where state-owned operators remain shareholders.
The investment also arrives as subsea cable capacity around the African coastline expands rapidly. Several new cable systems are either live or under construction, including projects backed by Google, Meta and regional consortia. WIOCC's ability to aggregate last-mile and terrestrial capacity to connect those landing stations inland will be a key differentiator as bandwidth costs on the subsea segment continue to fall.
Regulatory and standards read-across
Cross-border data infrastructure in Africa sits at the intersection of national telecommunications licensing, data-localisation requirements, and emerging continental frameworks under the African Union's Data Policy Framework. WIOCC's open-access structure, where it provides wholesale capacity rather than retail services, typically positions it below the threshold of the most restrictive localisation rules, but individual country licensing conditions vary. Investors will be watching for clarity on how the subsea investment programme aligns with the AU's push for intra-African data routing as negotiations over the African Continental Free Trade Area's digital annexe progress.