Airtel Nigeria Bets on Akwa Ibom for Faster Internet

Why It Matters

Diversifying internet gateways reduces outage risk and supports Nigeria’s growing digital economy, while MyJobMag’s scale highlights the rising demand for online talent solutions; Ghana’s licensing move aims to tighten network accountability as outsourcing grows.

Key Takeaways

• Airtel adds southern breakout via 2Africa cable
• Fibre sites up 15%, 4G near‑nationwide
• MyJobMag reaches 1M monthly users
• Ghana proposes Managed Service Licence for telecoms
• Multiple gateways boost Nigeria’s internet resilience

Pulse Analysis

The introduction of a second internet breakout in Akwa Ibom marks a pivotal shift for Nigeria’s connectivity architecture. By routing traffic through the 2Africa submarine cable, Airtel reduces the nation’s historic reliance on a single Lagos gateway, cutting latency for northern and southern users and creating redundancy that mitigates large‑scale outages. In a market where e‑commerce, fintech, and cloud services demand millisecond‑level performance, diversified entry points translate directly into lower transaction costs and higher consumer confidence. The move also positions Nigeria to better leverage the growing capacity of Africa’s new submarine cable consortiums.

Airtel’s rollout is underpinned by a 15 % expansion of its fibre backbone and near‑universal 4G coverage, while 5G sites are being densified in major metros. This infrastructure push narrows the gap with rivals such as MTN and Globacom, who have also been investing in undersea capacity. Faster, more reliable backhaul enables Airtel to monetize premium data services, enterprise cloud links, and edge computing offerings, all of which are essential for the country’s digital transformation agenda and for attracting foreign tech investment.

Parallel developments in the region reinforce the narrative of a maturing telecom ecosystem. Ghana’s consultation on an Electronic Communications Managed Service Licence seeks to formalise the role of third‑party infrastructure providers, tightening accountability and encouraging higher service standards. At the same time, platforms like MyJobMag, now serving over a million monthly users, demonstrate the appetite for digital talent marketplaces that can feed the expanding data‑driven economy. Together, these trends suggest that Africa’s telecoms landscape is moving from ad‑hoc expansion toward regulated, resilient, and value‑added networks.

Airtel Nigeria bets on Akwa Ibom for faster Internet

February 9, 2026 · Victoria Fakiya · Senior Writer, Techpoint Digest

Airtel Nigeria bets on Akwa Ibom for faster Internet

For years, Nigeria’s Internet traffic has flowed largely through one door in Lagos. Airtel now wants to open another, and this time, from the South.

The telco says it plans to launch a second Internet breakout point from southern Nigeria, using the 2Africa submarine cable with traffic routed from Kwa Ibo in Akwa Ibom State. Airtel Nigeria CEO Dinesh Balsingh shared the update during a media roundtable in Lagos, calling it a major step towards improving speed, resilience, and redundancy across the country.

What this means is simple: Nigeria will no longer be overly dependent on a single Internet gateway. With a southern breakout, large parts of the North and South will get a faster, alternative route for data traffic, while the entire ecosystem benefits from fewer outages and better reliability when something goes wrong in Lagos.

This matters because Internet disruptions don’t just slow Netflix; they affect banks, startups, government services, and millions of daily online transactions. As data consumption keeps rising, having multiple breakout points is becoming less of a “nice‑to‑have” and more of a national necessity.

Airtel says the move is backed by years of heavy investment in fibre and network upgrades. Its fibre backbone now reaches almost all states, site numbers are up over 15 %, nearly all locations deliver 4G speeds, and 5G rollout is accelerating, though coverage is still patchy. In short, the infrastructure race is heating up, and Airtel is betting that long‑term planning, not quick wins, will define who leads Nigeria’s data future.

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Inside the making of MyJobMag

Photo by Alex Green

From playing Solitaire on a bulky desktop in the late ’90s to building one of Africa’s most recognisable job platforms, Ogugua Belonwu’s path into tech started with pure curiosity and slowly turned into a mission. Long before “startup founder” entered his vocabulary, he was the kid who knew how to type documents, save files on floppy discs, and impress friends simply by knowing his way around a computer.

That early fascination followed him into university, where he studied computer science after ruling out medicine and other paths. Money was tight after school, but Belonwu scraped together ₦50,000 — half of it borrowed — to buy a second‑hand laptop that became his constant companion. Teaching by day and learning by night, he steadily built the technical confidence that would later power something much bigger.

The real idea for MyJobMag didn’t come from a pitch deck or a startup incubator. It came from newspaper stands. While in school, Belonwu followed a routine his dad swore by: buying newspapers on specific days just to check job listings. Over time, he noticed others couldn’t even afford the papers and stood under the sun flipping pages, hoping to spot an opportunity. That was the moment it clicked: this entire job‑hunting process could live online.

With basic web skills and very little money, he started scanning job pages from newspapers, converting them into text, and uploading them online. MyJobMag was born. In its early days, the team built almost everything from scratch, from browser‑based job alerts to homemade email systems, simply because paid tools were out of reach. Those scrappy, creative decisions helped the platform grow without burning cash.

Today, MyJobMag has evolved far beyond a digital noticeboard. With over a million monthly users, the platform is focused on building Africa’s workforce across multiple regions while connecting local talent to global opportunities, including the UK. From AI tools to community features, Belonwu’s vision is clear: make African talent visible, accessible, and fairly rewarded.

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Ghana prepares rules for third‑party telecoms operators

Ghana’s telecoms regulator is about to start paying closer attention to the companies quietly running large parts of the country’s networks. The National Communications Authority (NCA) has opened a public consultation on a new licence for third‑party firms that manage and support telecoms infrastructure, signalling a notable shift in how the sector will be regulated.

At the centre of the move is a proposed Electronic Communications Managed Service Licence, aimed at companies that operate network infrastructure or provide technical and operational support to licensed telecom operators. As mobile network operators increasingly outsource network planning, maintenance, optimisation, and customer‑experience monitoring, the NCA wants formal rules around who can do what and under what conditions.

Why this matters is simple: these managed service providers now sit deep inside the telecoms value chain, but until now, they’ve operated without direct licensing oversight. When outages happen or service quality drops, accountability can get blurry. A formal licensing regime could tighten standards, clarify responsibilities, and improve network resilience across the board.

The consultation runs from February 6 to March 6, 2026, and the NCA is inviting feedback from operators, ICT users, and the general public. Submissions must be sent electronically and will be published publicly, reflecting the regulator’s transparency‑first approach. Once the process wraps up, the NCA says it will publish the outcomes and move towards implementation.

This isn’t happening in isolation. Ghana’s telecoms sector is evolving fast, with MTN Ghana, AT Ghana, and Vodafone Ghana leaning more heavily on partners, alongside tower companies like Helios, American Tower, and Phoenix. The move also follows earlier 2026 consultations on value‑added services and Wi‑Fi 6 spectrum, underscoring the NCA’s push to modernise regulation as infrastructure, outsourcing, and service models continue to change.