BRCK, the Kenyan company bringing internet access to East Africa, has
acquired Surf, another internet provider, to become the largest public
WiFi network in Sub-Saharan Africa.
BRCK was formed in 2013 by some of the co-founders of Ushahidi and
Nairobi’s iHub as a means of countering Kenya’s notorious power
failures with a portable hotspot, It then expanded into education
bringing multimedia video education into classrooms across East Africa.
In 2017, it launched a smart system called Supa BRCK, which aimed to
solve the lack of internet access in Africa by bringing the internet
to rural villages.
By acquiring Surf, which is the second-largest public WiFi provider in
Kenya, BRCK aims to grow faster in fixed WiFi locations.”
Plans also include finding new ways to enter new geographic markets,
starting with fixed WiFi and then with “transportation and edge
connectivity”.
The combined companies will now have over 2,000 public hotspots across
Kenya, with 500,000 users a month.
BRCK believes that the acquisition will go a long way towards
supporting Africa’s technological evolution.