The award honours his outstanding strategic leadership and innovative vision, which has transformed Angola Cables into one of Africa’s most dynamic and globally connected telecommunications operators while strengthening Angola’s position as a leading international technology hub.

Since assuming leadership in 2020, Ângelo Gama has steered Angola Cables from a wholesale internet operator to a major international network operator spanning four continents.

Under his guidance, the company has expanded its global footprint with offices in more than seven cities across five countries and a multicultural team of 200 certified professionals.

Angola Cables now operates 33,000 km of its own submarine cable infrastructure and accesses over 50,000 km of commercial networks, connecting more than 30 points of presence worldwide.

Gama has spearheaded a comprehensive international expansion strategy. In the past 18 months, Angola Cables has established subsidiary operations under the TelCables brand in Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa and the USA to strengthen its presence in Latin America, West Africa, Southern Africa, and the Middle East. The company recently launched TelCables Europe, extending services from Africa to European markets.

Today, Angola Cables is the most interconnected operator in Africa and the CPLP community, with 70% of the continent’s connectivity passing through its network points.

It is also the only African company ranked among the world’s Top 100 providers of global interconnectivity, holding the 21st position in the CAIDA global rankings.

Ângelo Gama has also been instrumental in the development and promotion of proprietary cloud and productivity solutions, including Clouds2Africa, Clouds2Brasil, Backup2Africa and Backup2Brasil to provide more affordable digital solutions especially for companies operating across developing markets.

He has championed the Africa 80/20 initiative, ensuring that 80% of Africa’s data and connectivity business remains on the continent, generating economic growth and supporting local operators.

The company has also launched the AceleraNet program to mentor small Internet Service Providers and operators in Angola to improve skills development within the IT sector and promote digital sustainability.

“Receiving the AICEP Leadership Award is a profound honour, not only for me but for the entire Angola Cables team,” said Ângelo Gama. “This recognition reflects our shared commitment to building world-class digital infrastructure from Africa that connects continents, creates opportunity, and drives sustainable development. Our vision is clear: to be the leading African provider of digital services, making high-quality connectivity more accessible and affordable for people, businesses and citizens across the continent, and becoming the digital partner of choice for every international organisation seeking to connect with Africa.”

The company has delivered an average 22% EBITDA growth over three years and is on track to balance its revenue sources, targeting 80% from international markets within the next five years.

Looking ahead, Gama says the company strategy continues to focus on cementing partnerships to support the development of artificial intelligence and agentic learning in Africa, promoting their cloud computing and next-generation digital solutions, and solidifying Luanda as one of Africa’s foremost technological hubs.

“Our ultimate aim is to position Angola Cables as an innovative, forward-thinking company committed to making Africa a prominent player in the rapidly evolving global digital economy of the future.”

The international ranking system gauges and ranks the number of interconnections that can route Internet traffic through a specific network or network ID (ASN Number).

In the latest global rankings, international digital services and solutions provider, Angola Cables achieved the highest ranking by an African entity – ranking 33^rd on the global list – the company is the only African entity in the Top 100 list.

Ângelo Gama, CEO of Angola Cables described the CAIDA ranking is an important yardstick that gives insights into the size and level of interconnectivity when routing internet traffic around Africa and to other continents across the world.

“As a global network service provider based in Africa, we have built a robust and efficient network that gives customers secure, low latency connectivity across the world from the USA to South America, Europe and Asia – through our resilient subsea cable network and 3^rd party partnerships.  In addition to this, we have more than twenty Points of Presence (PoPs) in twenty countries and over 200 international peering agreements currently in place,” says Gama.

“The Angola Cables’ network offers flexible and highly reliable services to businesses, academic and research entities and end-users looking to conduct or expand their operations and reach in today’s modern, global digital economy.”

Of the first 100 global network entities monitored by CAIDA: 28 are North American; 36 European; 19 Latin American, 12 Asian, 3 from Oceania, with the African continent being solely represented by Angola Cables.

Autonomous Systems were introduced to regulate networking organizations such as Internet Service Providers (ISP), educational institutions and government agencies and also serve a more practical purpose of routing packets of information between different networks or ASN assigned entities using Border Gateway Protocols (BGPs) to route digital data and content.

“The latest CAIDA rankings reflect the efforts of a dedicated team of individuals and business partners that are focused on delivering effective connectivity solutions and services that can interconnect more businesses, content providers and ISPs in Africa to the rest of the world,” concluded Gama.

Angola Cables is a multinational in the ICT sector with differentiated connectivity solutions for the wholesale and corporate markets.

With a robust transport infrastructure and highly interconnected IP network, Angola Cables provides access to the largest IXPs, Tier 1 operators and global content providers.

Through the subsea cable systems of SACS, Monet and WACS we connect the Americas, Africa and Europe with onward connections to Asia.

Angola Cables manage the Data Center Tier III AngoNAP Fortaleza (Brazil) and AngoNAP Luanda (Angola) as well as PIX and Angonix, one of the largest Internet Exchange Points in Africa.