BRCK has today announced its decision to acquire assets of Surf, and parent company EveryLayer at Africa Tech Summit Kigali, to further its mission of ‘Connecting Africa to the Internet’ by providing affordable and reliable internet access to the public.
Surf has been accelerating and expanding high-speed access across emerging markets since 2015 and is perfectly positioned to catalyse BRCK’s status as the most prolific provider of public WiFi in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
With this acquisition, BRCK will extend its reach to over 2,500 Hotspots across Kenya and Rwanda, serving a community of 500,000 users a month and making it one of the largest public WiFi networks in sub-saharan Africa. This marks an important moment in BRCK’s journey towards meeting Africa’s unique needs and expanding on the continent’s connectivity infrastructure. BRCK believes that the acquisition will go a long way towards supporting Africa’s technological evolution.
In addition to its Moja network BRCK will manage and operate Surf’s hotspots going forward. During the transition process, BRCK will maintain continuity of service for Surf’s current network offering and commit to transparent communication with customers on any network changes.
“The team at Surf has done a remarkable job of building public fixed WiFi in Kenya, and we’re happy to have that come under the BRCK umbrella in our mission to create affordable access to the internet at greater scale in Africa,” shared BRCK CEO, Erik Hersman at Africa Tech Summit.
BRCK, which was established in 2013, has built a reputation of operational excellence working on internet connectivity in frontier markets and is renowned for its innovative work building hardware products such as the original BRCK device, the Kio Kit for education, SupaBRCK and other technological solutions for the African market.
The Surf network acquisition means that BRCK’s existing public WiFi offering is immediately expanded and that there is brand consolidation of hotspots, which should further develop customer loyalty and brand recognition.
