Digital economy blueprint

5.6.2 Reliable, Affordable, and Secure 

Broadband Connectivity

Access to broadband connectivity has been identified 

globally as key driver of economic development, so-

cio-economic wellbeing and innovation. Broadband 

connectivity in Kenya has experienced tremendous 

growth largely due to government initiatives, liberal-

ization, and a robust regulatory environment. Howev-

er, despite heavy investment in broadband connectiv-

ity infrastructure, there exists a wide “digital divide” 

in the access to connectivity services in the country. 

Previous studies have been conducted to establish the 

extent of the digital divide in Kenya. For example, 

in their study, the Communications Authority (CA) in 

the year 2016 established that there are more than 580 

sub-locations with less than 50% GSM population 

coverage, of which 164 had no mobile signal at all. 

Further, there were 2,221 sub-locations with less than 

50% 3G population coverage, of which 1,221 have 

no access to 3G services at all. Additionally, there is 

low geographical coverage of broadband services; for 

example, 50% of locations have no 3G services; while 

83% of the land mass lacks broadband services cover-

age. Finally, fiber optic cables only cover 60,000 km 

(17% land coverage).

Several efforts have been put in place to bridge the 

gaps in the digital divide and these include:

i.  Investments by private sector operators to expand 

backbone and last-mile access networks using 

optical  fiber  (inter-county  fiber,  metro  fiber  net-

works), 3G, 4G, FTTH, FTTB, WiMax and WiFi 

technologies.

ii. Government initiatives such as the National Op-

tical Fiber Backbone Infrastructure (NOFBI), 

TEAMS, Government Common Core Network, 

Kenya Transparency and Communication Infra-

structure Project, Kenya Education Network Trust 

(KENET), Security Infrastructure among others.

iii. Investment in broadband network infrastrastruc-

ture for research and education covering higher ed-

ucation and research ecosystem, tertiary colleges, 

hospitals and schools.

iv. Initiatives by the Communications Authority us-

ing the Universal Service Fund (USF) such as the 

Voice Infrastructure and Services Project (provi-

sion of basic mobile services to unreached sub-lo-

cations) and the Education Broadband Project  

(provision of Internet bandwidth to public second-

ary schools). 

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DIGITAL ECONOMY BLUEPRINT

Critical infrastructure that support broadband connec-

tivity needs to be identified and secured. The critical 

infrastructure should also be designed and imple-

mented to ensure scalability and elasticity that will 

meet current and future demands of the country. Some 

of the critical infrastructure include:

i.  The country’s top level domain operated by 

KeNIC.

ii. The national exchange points operated by 

TESPOK, where different broadband connectivity 

operators exchange data traffic.

iii. National Optical Fiber Backbone Infrastructure 

(NOFBI) and other inter-county optical fiber 

installations.

iv. Subsea Optical fiber infrastructure such as 

TEAMS, SEACOM, EASsy and DARE.

v.  Public and Carrier-neutral Data centers hosting 

other critical infrastructure installations.

To further improve the penetration of broadband con-

nectivity, initiatives geared towards implementing 

cost-effective last mile access solutions should be ad-

opted by both the private sector and the government. 

Extension of fiber to the home where a critical mass 

of users has been established coupled with last-mile 

WiFi access should be encouraged. 

Further, implementation of intelligent, secure and 

low energy consumption technologies such as 5G, 

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), LoRa, among others, 

should be encouraged to spearhead the push towards a 

highly connected society that will support a digitized 

economy.