WACREN Regional Network Expansion Launch

Presented By: WACREN

The expansion connected six new countries — The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, and Senegal — to the WACREN backbone, joining Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire. Twelve countries are now connected to WACREN’s dedicated high-speed, low-latency network purpose-built for research and education.

What This Means for GAMREN

For GAMREN and its member institutions, the connection to the WACREN backbone represents a transformational shift. Higher education and research institutions in The Gambia that have long faced limited connectivity and prohibitive costs now have access to:

• International academic databases and digital libraries — enabling researchers and students to access the same resources as their peers worldwide
• Virtual laboratories and cloud computing resources — supporting data-intensive research across disciplines
• Real-time global collaboration — connecting Gambian institutions directly to counterparts across Africa, Europe, and beyond through the WACREN–GÉANT interconnection
• Advanced services including eduroam, identity federation, and cybersecurity capabilities delivered through the regional network

Lagos–Cape Town Interconnection

The expansion also included a historic first: a new 10 Gbps link between Lagos and Cape Town, activated through the ZAOXI Global Exchange Point. This creates the first-ever interconnection of Research and Education Networks across African regions, bridging West Africa and Southern Africa and opening new corridors for pan-African scientific collaboration.

Climate and Innovation Agenda

WACREN plans to leverage the expanded connectivity to advance its climate monitoring programme, deploying WMO-compliant weather stations integrated with LoRaWAN IoT gateways across newly connected countries. A regional data portal will provide African researchers and national meteorological agencies with access to terrestrial data streams from EUMETSAT, making critical weather and climate data more accessible even in resource-constrained institutions.

The Launch Event

The celebration in Accra brought together governments, funders, telecom providers, NRENs, and members of academia from across the region. Representatives from the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the Africa Internet community all emphasised the importance of this milestone — not just for infrastructure, but for what it enables: greater collaboration, faster innovation, and a stronger foundation for Africa’s knowledge economy.

Source: WACREN
Original article: wacren.net/en/eu-uk-africa-internet-summit-urge-wacren-to-make-impact-with-new-connections/