During Huawei Eco-Connect Sub-Saharan Africa 2023, which recently took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, Kenya’s ICT Secretary of Administration Mohamed Jabane delivered a keynote outlining his country’s digital transformation journey. He also outlined how partnerships, including the ones that various state organisations have in place with Huawei, have helped make Kenya a leading digital player on the African continent.
In doing so, he emphasised the importance of its decision to build a new network architecture through technological innovation with the aim of improving government office efficiency, network management efficiency, and national broadband coverage.
Jabane further shed light on Kenya’s long-term development blueprint, pointing out that the country’s weak information industry environment and communication technology infrastructure have historically been bottlenecks that hinder both economic and commercial development. By contrast, the country’s current national policy emphasises the importance of ICT infrastructure in achieving its development ambitions.
The Kenya Digital Highway Project, in particular, is a major national strategy that aims to turn Kenya into a globally competitive and prosperous country. It involves Kenya’s ICT Ministry and Huawei coming together to construct an ultra-broadband national backbone network and last-mile coverage. This will help to address a number of problems, such as inadequate coverage by the original backbone network, damaged optical cables, lack of ring network protection in some areas, and lack of access networks. The ministry has also initiated the Digital Highway Project to guide the upgrade of ICT infrastructure.
The cooperation comprises three key parts:
1. Constructing a new national backbone network: The National Optic Fiber Backbone Infrastructure (NOFBI) and Government Common Core Network (GCCN) projects are underway and will deliver an ultra-broadband national backbone network once completed.
2. Providing last-mile coverage: The digital highway will connect numerous government offices, schools, hospitals, rural areas, and more.
3. Delivering unified cloud-based services: Services will be moved to the cloud for fast response.
The national backbone network is key to building a fully connected digital nation. It serves as the bridge for cloudification, connecting services and terminals. Huawei’s CloudWAN solution uses NetEngine series routers to build fully connected, scalable, and smarter future networks for Kenya.
These routers possess the following characteristics:
● Cost-effective ultra-large bandwidth. They support smooth evolution. The 100 Gbps core layer of the new IP backbone network can be upgraded to 400 Gbps in the next five years.
● Super-reliable always-on services. They support intelligent application acceleration, ensuring low latency and zero packet loss for mission-critical services.
● Super simple and efficient O&M. They can be managed by a unified NMS. Moreover, the existing NMS is scalable and can be used for integrated O&M and improved O&M efficiency.
Huawei is dedicated to scientific and technological innovation that targets customer needs, with a focus on enhancing competitiveness and delivering high-quality products and solutions. And by leveraging innovative IPv6 Enhanced technologies, Huawei is also dedicated to constructing Kenya’s digital system, enhancing its digital governance and service efficiency, meeting the requirements of sustainable economic and public service growth, and offering robust support to fuel Kenya’s economic take-off.