Kenya seeks private funding for undersea telecom link
Kenya on Monday invited telecom operators to invest six billion shillings ($90 million) to build an undersea fibre optic cable to boost African telecommunications links with the rest of the world.
The state Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) said it had been allocated one billion shillings ($15 million) by the government, but was short of six billion to lay the The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS).
"While the TEAMS project is a government initiative, its ownership, implementation and management shall be on a private-public sector partnership arrangement," CCK said in a statement.
"The government intends to give priority to licenced operators in the East African Community who may be interested in participating in the project," it added.
The cable, in which United Arab Emirates firm Etisalat is to hold stake, will link the Kenyan port city of Mombasa with Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman.
Once completed, the link is expected to dramatically reduce the cost of cost of international calls and internet access in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.
African countries spend about $400 million a year to route voice and data traffic from Africa back to Africa through Europe and North America, where such services are a fraction of the cost.
Kenya has been keen to create communications links to market itself as a centre for business outsourcing, like India.
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