Joy Selasi Agbesi (BSc. '14), a Ghanaian engineer and alumnus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi has been recognised for his work in building Africa’s digital networks and advancing artificial intelligence infrastructure at Meta in the United States.

Agbesi, an optical network engineer, has led the design and deployment of communication backbones across West Africa. Between 2022 and 2024, he directed Ghana’s first 400GE nationwide backbone expansion on MTN’s network, creating 34 points of presence, 12 data centres and four submarine cable landing stations. The project prepared the country for fintech growth, 5G adoption and cloud services.

He also oversaw Sierra Leone’s national backbone network expansion after the Ebola crisis, which extended broadband connectivity to cities, towns and rural communities. The project enabled online classrooms, mobile banking and e-governance platforms.

Agbesi now works at Meta as a network engineer in operations support. He is involved in rolling out Nvidia GB200 AI compute server racks across global data centres, part of the company’s multibillion-dollar investment in large-scale AI model training.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Telecommunications Engineering from KNUST and a Master of Science in Information and Telecommunication Systems from Ohio University in the United States, where he contributed to IPv6 transition strategies and training on software-defined networking.

KNUST described his achievements as reflecting the university’s role in producing graduates contributing to technology and innovation in Africa and abroad.

This story was originally adapted from “African Engineer Leads Broadband Expansion,” published by The Punch Nigeria.