A Hong Kong company providing technology and telecoms services for Africa’s first ever “smart city” project in Johannesburg has quietly been building up a client base across the continent.

On Tuesday, PCCW Global - which is the international operating division of Hong Kong's telecommunications service provider HKT - announced that it has inked a deal with Chinese urban developer Shanghai Zendai to provide telecoms and tech services for an R84 billion Zendai smart city project in Modderfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The futuristic Modderfontein smart city is expected to be built as Johannesburg’s “new city centre”, covering an area of about 1,600 hectares.

The development, which is expected to take up to 20 years to complete, is set to include zones such as a central business district, an international conference and exhibition centre, entertainment centres, silver industry and retirement communities, international residential communities, an education district, sports area and light industry park.

And PCCW Global is planned to provide Zendai with services such as systems development and solutions integration, application development and management, telecommunications and information technology services, cloud computing services and e-commerce solutions.

But this is not the first major African deal that the Hong Kong affiliated company has struck.

“PCCW Global provides data and voice services, to both wholesale and enterprise customers, in more than 40 countries across Africa,” Mike van den Bergh, PCCW Global’s managing director of HKT Global Development Services, has told ITWeb Africa.

“Recently, we announced our investment in the AAE-1 (Asia Africa Europe-1) submarine cable, a high-capacity system that PCCW Global is building with 16 other major service providers, and which is planned to be ready for service in 2016. The network will connect Africa and the Middle East to Asia and Europe, transforming the shape of communications between Asia and Africa and supporting the growth in intercontinental trade.

“We have also been pioneering the build out of connectivity to landlocked countries, particularly in Southern Africa, taking connectivity from cable systems such as WACS (in which PCCW Global is also a direct investor) into countries which were previously cut off from the benefits of high speed internet access,” the official told ITWeb Africa.

In addition, van den Bergh said PCCW Global “has been active in the South African market for many years.”

But he said the company “took a major step forward in 2012” with the acquisition of Gateway Communications, a pan-African service provider with more than 20 years experience delivering telecommunications services in South Africa and across the African continent.

“Recently we announced an agreement with the MTN Group to extend their global virtual private network (VPN) to new markets in Europe, Asia and North America, allowing MTN Business to provide wide area network (WAN), local area network (LAN) and managed customer premise equipment (CPE) services in countries where PCCW Global is present,” van den Bergh told ITWeb Africa.

PCCW Global’s van den Bergh said the company has also struck a deal with fixed line operator Telecom Namibia to interconnect with its worldwide Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network.

PCCW Global has not been willing to disclose the value of its Modderfontein smart city deal with ITWeb Africa. Meanwhile, the company has also said the project timelines will be decided upon by Zendai.