Tanzania already has agreements for sharing its national fiber optic backbone with neighboring countries. These include Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Malawi, Kenya…
Tanzania will interconnect its National Broadband ICT Backbone (NICTBB) with the Uganda National ICT Backbone Infrastructure (NBI). To this end, a memorandum of understanding was signed on Friday, September 29, between the Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation (TTCL) and the National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITA-U). Worth $28.8 million, this partnership will last 15 years.
According to Nape Nnauye, Tanzanian Minister of Information, Communication and Information Technology, this partnership is the result of the visit of Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan to Uganda in May 2022. She had agreed with her Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni to integrate the ICT backbones of their two countries in order to offer better Internet services.
The new agreement comes about three weeks after the Tanzanian government agreed to connect Malawi to its national fiber optic backbone. Tanzania wants to form a large regional fiber optic loop to meet the ever-increasing demand for high-speed connectivity, both in the national and regional markets. The country already has agreements in progress with neighbors such as Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan are expected to join the list soon.
“ Technology is evolving rapidly; the fourth industrial revolution now gives a chance to the fifth revolution. We must work hard to ensure that technology does not remain on the books but is translated into reality ,” said Chris Baryomunsi, Uganda’s Minister of Information and Communication Technology and Development. National orientation.