Kenya
Kenya anchors East Africa's submarine cable connectivity through Mombasa, one of the continent's most significant landing hubs, with a mix of active systems and planned additions shaping the country's international bandwidth.
Connectivity at a glance
- Cable systems
- 3active
- 2 planned
- Landing points
- 2
- Resilience score
- 37
Cable systems serving Kenya
| Cable | Status | Ready for service | Length | Design capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PEACE Cable | active | 10 November 2022 | — | Up to 24 Tbit/s (per fiber pair) |
| EASSy (Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System) | active | }} | 10,000 km | more than 10 Tbit/s |
| KDN-Reliance | active | — | — | — |
| Africa-1 | planned | — | — | 96 Tbit/s (12 Tbit/s per fiber pair)}} |
| TEAMS<br/>(The East African Marine System) | planned | }} | 4,500 km | 40 Gb/s (upgradeable to 640 Gb/s) |
Landing points
- Kenya Mombasa, KenyaKenya Mombasa
- Mombasa, KenyaMombasa
A coastal gateway for the region
Mombasa serves as Kenya's sole documented submarine cable landing point and, by extension, one of the most consequential cable hubs on the African continent. Its position on the Indian Ocean coast places Kenya along natural routing corridors between Europe, the Middle East, and southern and eastern Africa — a geography that operators have consistently chosen to exploit.
The active cable mix
Three systems currently land in Kenya. EASSy — the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System — spans roughly 10,000 kilometres and connects Kenya to a wider chain of East and southern African coastal nations, providing a foundational artery for regional traffic. PEACE Cable, which entered service in 2022, extends Kenya's reach toward the Middle East and onward to Europe via a different routing corridor, adding meaningful diversity to the international path options available from Mombasa. KDN-Reliance rounds out the active systems, though detailed route and length data for that cable are not yet recorded in this register.
Together, three active cables represent a reasonable baseline for a country of Kenya's economic weight. Multiple landing systems reduce the risk that a single fault — whether from a ship's anchor, a seismic event, or equipment failure — can isolate the country entirely from international connectivity.
Planned additions
Two further systems appear in the pipeline. Africa-1 is listed as planned, with route and length figures not yet confirmed in this register. TEAMS — The East African Marine System — is also documented as planned, with a noted length of approximately 4,500 kilometres. If both projects proceed to completion, Kenya's cable count and capacity headroom would expand considerably, and Mombasa's status as a regional hub would be reinforced.
Geography as both asset and constraint
Mombasa's value is structural. A single coastal city concentrating all of Kenya's submarine cable landings creates efficiencies in terrestrial backhaul infrastructure, but it also means that localised disruption at that landing point carries outsized national consequences. Diversity of cables through the same physical landing station is not equivalent to geographic diversity of landing points. Whether Kenya develops secondary coastal landing infrastructure over time will matter as much as the number of cable systems on paper.
For landlocked neighbours relying on Kenya for onward transit, the resilience profile of Mombasa's cable cluster has regional significance well beyond Kenya's own bandwidth requirements.