Digital technical networks on the Africancontinent and their multiple uses in Kenya
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2179-0892.geousp.2025.239634Keywords:
Digital networks, Africa, Kenya, Safaricom, M-PesaAbstract
The African continent has been undergoing profound digital transformations in recent decades. Since the turn of the 21st century, Africa has not only gone from being a ‘marginal’ continent to a ‘central’ one on the world map of submarine fibre optic cables, but it has also become increasingly digitally integrated internally. The installation of these digital technical networks (such as fibre optic cables and data centres) has also generated a considerable variety of uses for these infrastructures, ranging from software production to the implementation of digital payment systems and the digitalization of government services. In this process, some countries stand out, with an historical concentration of the African internet in the north of the continent and in South Africa. However, Kenya is increasingly establishing itself as a contemporary digital hub, the result of decades of policies aimed at the sector and the establishment of a robust national telecommunications company.
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