Pan-African connectivity firm Seacom has announced plans to avail a dedicated fibre connection from Kenya to South Africa's public cloud networks and datacentres.

The move has been driven by the recent launch of Microsoft datacentres in South Africa, the company stated.

Microsoft launched its first datacentres in Africa in March 2019, with the general availability of Azure from the new cloud regions in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa.

A statement from the company reads: "Seacom's offering, available to business customers, will deliver direct, high-speed, dedicated and secure connectivity to the Microsoft datacentres via resilient network connections from Kenya to South Africa."

"The Seacom subsea cable, which connects Kenya to South Africa, offers a fibre express route that carries Terabytes of capacity with speeds from as low as 50Mbps up to 10Gbps."

In 2016 Seacom focused on companies that aimed to deploy services on the cloud. This led to the introduction of Azure ExpressRoute and the offer to Seacom customers to extend their on-premise networks into the cloud in collaboration with Microsoft.

Three years later Seacom has stated: "The opportunity for Kenyan businesses to leverage Seacom's ExpressRoute to connect directly and reliably to these Microsoft datacentres will enable more Kenyan businesses to embrace the cloud and enhance digitisation."

At the beginning of March 2019, Seacom acquired FibreCo Telecommunications in South Africa.

According to Seacom, FibreCo network runs along South Africa's highest-traffic transmission routes and links all major South African cities.

With this acquisition, Kenyan businesses can access major datacentres where cloud providers have a presence, throughout South Africa.