LuLu Cable System Launches on Kenya’s Coast

African Media Agency, African Newspage
September 9, 2026

LuLu, a planned coastal submarine cable system for Kenya, was announced at ITW Africa 2026 as a route along the country’s Indian Ocean shoreline. The system is designed to cover about 500km between Mombasa and Lamu, with five landing points identified along the corridor: Mombasa, Vipingo Special Economic Zone, Kilifi, Malindi and Lamu.

The project is being advanced by INDOI Ltd. (IOX), Blue Trade Investments Limited, ARISE IIP, AfriTrade Consulting Group and Kingdom Bank. INDOI is identified as the developer, owner and commercial operator, while Blue Trade is listed as the Kenyan landing party, regulatory interface and delivery partner. Technically, LuLu is planned as a dual-path system, pairing a subsea route with a protected terrestrial path. It is expected to use DWDM technology in the 1550nm window, with 144 fibre pairs, design capacity of up to 60 Tbps per fibre pair and a planned 25-year operating life. Centralized network management is also specified, while the parallel land route is intended to help maintain availability if one path is disrupted.

For Kenya and East Africa, the project would add coastal diversity beyond the main international cable concentration at Mombasa while extending high-capacity infrastructure toward emerging industrial and logistics locations. The Vipingo SEZ landing is positioned to support digital infrastructure within the zone, including data centre, cloud, business process outsourcing, financial technology, cybersecurity and smart manufacturing use cases. The source also links the system to the wider LAPSSET corridor, indicating a role in connecting coastal development areas as well as international operators and enterprise users.

The confirmed status is that LuLu has been announced and its route, partners and intended technical architecture have been disclosed. The next stated milestone is progression toward readiness for service in Q2 2028, and that RFS target is subject to contract execution. Until those contracts are completed, the date should be treated as a target rather than a committed in-service date. The release does not name a system supplier, construction start, route-survey schedule or completed contracts, making those the key markers to watch as the consortium moves from announcement into execution.

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