A Ghanaian engineer, Joy Selasi Agbesi, has been recognised for his contributions to Africa’s digital transformation, particularly in broadband expansion across West Africa and the deployment of advanced artificial intelligence infrastructure at Meta in the United States, according to Monday’s release.

Selasi, an optical network engineer with more than a decade of experience, has worked on the design, deployment and management of communication backbones in countries including Ghana and Sierra Leone. His work spans broadband access projects in West Africa as well as global AI infrastructure initiatives at Meta.

Between 2022 and 2024, he led Ghana’s first 400GE Nationwide Backbone Expansion on MTN’s network, a project that established 34 points of presence, 12 data centres and four submarine cable landing stations. The initiative is regarded as a foundation for fintech growth, 5G readiness and cloud adoption in the country.

He also directed Sierra Leone’s National Backbone Network expansion, which connected cities, towns and rural communities following the Ebola crisis. The project enabled access to e-learning, mobile banking and e-governance platforms.

 “In Sierra Leone, children can now attend digital classrooms because broadband has reached their communities. That, to me, is the true measure of impact,” Selasi said in the statement.

Currently serving as a network engineer in operations support at Meta, Selasi is overseeing the rollout of Nvidia GB200 AI Compute Server Racks across global data centres, part of a multibillion-dollar initiative to support large-scale AI model training. He described the work as vital to enhancing digital experiences worldwide.

Selasi earned a Bachelor of Science in Telecommunications Engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and a Master of Science in Information and Telecommunication Systems from Ohio University, where he worked on IPv6 transition strategies and software-defined networking training content.