By: Nana
Appiah Acquaye
Kenya’s State Department for
ICT and the Digital Economy has won the Smart Gigacity Excellence Award at the
World Broadband Association (WBBA) Broadband Excellence Awards 2026, announced
on Wednesday, 14 October, in Vienna, Austria.
The award recognises Konza
City, described as Africa’s first AI-operated Giga-City and developed by the
Technopolis Development Authority, as a global model for gigabit-enabled urban
development.
Kenya was shortlisted in the
category alongside CTM and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.
The award was received by
Amb. Valerie Rugene, Ambassador and Deputy Head of Mission at the Kenya Embassy
and Permanent Mission in Vienna, on behalf of the Principal Secretary for ICT
and the Digital Economy, Eng. John Tanui, and the Government and people of the
Republic of Kenya.
Konza City’s infrastructure
includes a 79-kilometre city-wide fibre backbone connecting businesses,
institutions and homes. Public Wi-Fi and smart poles equipped with CCTV and
environmental sensors feed data to the Intelligent Operations Centre to support
real-time monitoring and faster responses.
The city also features smart
drainage, a wastewater reclamation facility that recycles up to 90% of treated
water, and an automated underground waste-collection system.
The Konza National Data
Centre provides secure cloud and hosting services to government and local
businesses, while the Open University of Kenya, the Kenya Advanced Institute of
Science and Technology and Riara University link research with enterprise and
innovation.
“Kenya accepts this honour
not as the completion of Konza’s journey, but as a call to accelerate it and to
share a practical, replicable model with cities across Africa,” the statement
said.
The recognition affirms the
leadership of President William Samoei Ruto and continued investment in fibre,
data centres and digital public infrastructure by the State Department for ICT
and the Digital Economy under the Digital Superhighway.
