Kenya’s coastal digital infrastructure is set for a major upgrade following the launch of the LuLu Coastal Cable System, the country’s first fully protected coastal submarine cable network, at ITW Africa 2026.
The system was developed by INDOI Ltd, Blue Trade Investments Limited, ARISE Integrated Industrial Platforms, AfriTrade Consulting Group and Kingdom Bank Limited.
According to a statement by INDOI Ltd on Wednesday, LuLu will connect five strategic landing points along Kenya’s 500-kilometre Indian Ocean coastline, extending from Mombasa to Lamu. The landing points include Mombasa, Vipingo Special Economic Zone, Kilifi and Malindi.
The system combines a submarine cable laid along the ocean floor with a parallel protected terrestrial route, designed to strengthen connectivity and improve the resilience of Kenya’s coastal digital infrastructure.
The dual-path architecture is designed to enhance network resilience, redundancy and availability for governments, international operators, data-centre companies and other mission-critical users.
According to the firm, the system will deploy dense wavelength division multiplexing technology in the 1,550-nanometre window, with 144 fibre pairs and a design capacity of up to 60 terabits per second per fibre pair.
The company said the LuLu Coastal Cable System was designed to operate for 25 years, with centralised network management. It is expected to be ready for service in the second quarter of 2028, subject to the execution of contracts.
The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of INDOI Ltd, Arunachalam Kandasamy, said the project would help address a longstanding digital infrastructure gap along Kenya’s coast.
“East Africa is not a market of the future — it is a market of right now,” Kandasamy said. “Kenya’s coastal corridor, from Mombasa to Lamu, is one of the most dynamic, strategically significant and commercially compelling stretches of coastline on the planet. And yet, until today, it has never had a single, unified, fully protected digital infrastructure system designed specifically for it.”
He said LuLu would provide a permanent digital backbone for Kenya’s coastal corridor.
The statement said Blue Trade Investments Limited, INDOI’s Kenya-registered infrastructure partner, would serve as the designated cable landing party, regulatory liaison and operational delivery partner for the project in Kenya.
It added that the company’s relationships with Kenyan regulators, coastal communities and government institutions would support the local implementation and long-term operation of the system.
“The cable’s landing at Vipingo SEZ is expected to expand the zone’s investment potential beyond conventional manufacturing and logistics.
“Direct submarine cable connectivity within the special economic zone could support the development of hyperscale data centres, cloud-service regional nodes, business-process outsourcing and global business-services campuses, fintech and payment-processing platforms, cybersecurity operations centres and internet-of-things-enabled manufacturing services,” he noted.
