Kenya’s Communications Authority has signed a technical cooperation agreement with China-based Huawei that focuses on 5G rollout and expansion in the African nation, among other technology developments.
Ezra Chiloba, director general of the authority, announced on Twitter that the agreement is renewable every five years and also includes training on emerging technologies, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
The deal comes three months after the Kenyan government and Huawei signed an agreement to ramp up information and communication technology (ICT) skills and capacity in the country.
Major 5G contracts are increasingly rare for Chinese vendors, which have been implicitly or explicitly excluded from 5G network deployments in several countries over security concerns. However, they are still winning deals in African markets.
For example, Ethio Telecom is working with Huawei on pre-commercial 5G services, while Safaricom picked Nokia and Huawei for its 5G networks in Ethiopia and Kenya.
According to GSMA Intelligence Kenya has 63 million connections shared between four operators (market leader Safaricom as well as Airtel, Telkom and Faiba) and is yet to launch 5G services.
