December 19, (THEWILL) – She runs one of Africa’s most important and pivotal tech companies. MainOne, the holding company for Main Street Technologies, West Africa’s leading communications services and network solutions provider.
That Funke has done remarkably well by positioning the company as a highly reputed and preferred provider of wholesale internet services to major telecom operators, ISPs, government agencies, large enterprises and educational institutions in West Africa, would be simply stating the obvious. Little wonder, Equinix, one of the world’s leading digital infrastructure corporations, is all set to acquire the company for $320 million (about N134.70 billion) as part of its expansion in Africa, in a matter of months.
Funke’s quest to change the Internet landscape in Nigeria began after she moved back to the country in 2005 to assume the post of Chief Technology Officer at MTN Nigeria, following a telecoms career that spanned 20 years in the United States. She noticed the low Internet connectivity in Nigeria, which created a huge information and knowledge gap that was limiting business and education in Nigeria. She decided to do something about it, left MTN and joined Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) hoping that she could lead the way forward to developing the critical infrastructure for Internet connectivity in the country. Unfortunately, the frustrating work environment in a typical government organisation did not allow that to happen. She mused about running a 7,000-kilometre undersea high-capacity cable submarine from Portugal to Lagos. At first, the idea seemed unachievable, but she had a vision. She had her sights set on making it happen. And it did happen.
In 2008, the Ibadan-bred engineering graduate launched MainOne Cable Company. The project began with a black glass-fibre cable, originating from Portugal and sprang forth from the ground at the shore-end landing station in Ajah, Lagos connecting all the big operators in Nigeria and Ghana to the global Internet. Mission accomplished, the company took off fully in 2010. The result was an instant cyber-revolution in Nigeria, which made the company one of the biggest forces of transformation in the ICT sector in Nigeria.
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