Bayobab's Mazen Mroué on AI, Africa and the GLF board seat

Mazen Mroué, the newly appointed CEO of MTN Digital Infrastructure, oversees Bayobab’s fixed infrastructure and communication Platforms business units, while also driving the company’s data centre business strategy – positioning the organisation for growth and profitability as AI development accelerates across Africa.

By his own account, he is navigating a moment more consequential than even he anticipated. Demand for fibre, subsea capacity, and AI-ready data centres is outpacing what most in the industry predicted, and the pressure now falls squarely on execution.

“Disciplined delivery is the critical differentiator,” he says, with the kind of directness that suggests he has little patience for infrastructure businesses that can articulate ambition but struggle to convert it into returns.

His appointment to the Board of the Global Leaders’ Forum, announced ahead of ITW 2026 in Washington D.C. in May, is a marker of how sharply the centre of gravity in the wholesale connectivity world is shifting. African-led infrastructure players are no longer operating at the margins of global industry conversation; they are shaping it.

From enabling function to strategic platform

When Mroué stepped into the CEO role at Bayobab, MTN Group’s digital infrastructure and wholesale arm, he expected complexity. What he perhaps did not expect was how rapidly the perception of the business would shift, both inside MTN and in the broader market.

“Digital infrastructure has moved from being seen as an enabling business function to being recognised as a strategic growth platform in its own right,” he says.

That reframing matters enormously, not just commercially but strategically. Infrastructure businesses that are viewed as internal utilities tend to be managed for cost. Infrastructure businesses that are recognised as growth platforms attract capital, talent, and partnerships of a different order entirely.

Bayobab’s first full year of results, Mroué says, confirmed that the real engine sits in the combination of resilient fibre, international and subsea connectivity, and the early build-out of AI-ready data centres. The activation of the 2Africa West Subsea Route in Q4 2025 was a practical demonstration of that thesis – a high-capacity, low-latency path that strengthens route diversity for carrier customers and delivers more reliable cloud access for enterprise clients across the continent.

The honest admission, though, is that the pace of execution remains a challenge. “We must move faster with execution, simplify how infrastructure is accessed and monetised, and consistently convert scale into sustainable returns,” he says. It is a refreshingly candid acknowledgement that having the right assets is not the same as having a business that works efficiently at scale.

The AI question and who captures the value

The most pointed question may be whether African infrastructure providers like Bayobab can genuinely participate in the AI value chain, or whether they risk being little more than the pipe through which hyperscaler revenues flow.

Mroué’s answer is deliberate. Analysis from SAP suggests AI could contribute as much as US$1.5 trillion to Africa’s economy by 2030, a figure that is striking even with the usual caveats applied to long-range economic projections. His argument is that capturing any meaningful portion of that opportunity requires infrastructure investment that goes beyond connectivity – compute, data hosting, and applications need to sit closer to where demand actually exists.

“By combining infrastructure scale with partnerships, ecosystem enablement, and local presence, we support ensuring that AI value is created and democratised across African economies,” he says.

That framing, infrastructure as an enabler of local economic agency rather than a conduit for value extraction, is becoming a more prominent feature of how serious African operators position themselves. Whether the investment required to make it real arrives at the pace the opportunity demands is a different question, and one the industry has not yet fully answered.

Setting the GLF agenda

Mroué’s GLF Board seat brings with it a specific perspective that he is not shy about articulating. Operating across the range of markets that Bayobab does (with all the regulatory, commercial, and infrastructure complexity that entails) shapes a view of what responsible digital investment actually requires, as opposed to what it looks like on a conference panel.

“What I bring to the GLF table is a perspective shaped by fast-growing demand, constrained environments, and the need for open access and future-fit networks that work across borders,” he says.

His priorities for the Forum are similarly grounded. Trusted digital infrastructure and responsible investment for the Global South sit at the top of his agenda, with an emphasis on ensuring the global ecosystem evolves in a way that supports resilience, inclusion, and sustainable value creation, not just for the markets that already have it.

On the question of fraud, where Bayobab has attested to the GLF Code of Conduct for three consecutive years, Mroué is equally clear-eyed. Commercial pressure does not diminish the obligation. “Trust is foundational to the communications ecosystem and once it is eroded, value destruction follows rapidly,” he says. The industry, in his view, needs more coordinated enforcement, better information sharing, and consistent adaptation of standards, not just statements of principle that dissolve under revenue pressure.

He will attend his first GLF Board meeting at ITW 2026 in Washington D.C. in May, where the conversation about who gets to shape the next chapter of global digital infrastructure will be very much in the room.

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