Agility Beyond Space and Sonema deepen their long-term partnership to strengthen resilient connectivity across Africa

The two companies have signed a multi-year capacity agreement on the ABS-3A satellite that supports Sonema’s strategy and strengthens the digital infrastructure underpinning critical enterprise services across Africa and beyond.

Dubai and Monaco-Fréjus-Kinshasa, 11^th September 2026

Agility Beyond Space FZ-LLC and Sonema, an MBS Group company, today announce a new long-term capacity agreement on ABS-3A, further strengthening an eight-year partnership behind business-critical enterprise connectivity.

The agreement provides Sonema with committed satellite capacity to support the resilient networks it designs and operates for customers across Africa, Europe and the Middle East. It represents an important strategic building block in Sonema’s growth and transformation strategy, providing a stable and scalable connectivity foundation from which the company can continue to expand its cloud, cybersecurity, hosting and value-added managed services.

For Sonema, connectivity is the underlying foundation of every digital service it delivers. In sectors where service interruption is not an option, including banking and financial services, energy, mining and other critical industries, availability, redundancy and operational resilience are essential. This new agreement reinforces Sonema’s ability to deliver that promise over the long term.

A strategic partnership built around availability and resilience

Sonema and Agility Beyond Space began working together in 2018 around a specific connectivity requirement and, over eight years, that relationship has evolved into a major long-term partnership supporting enterprise networks whose customers depend on continuous service availability.

The new agreement commits capacity on ABS-3A as part of Sonema’s broader connectivity architecture, which combines satellite, terrestrial connectivity, fibre, SD-WAN and managed infrastructure services.

When existing third-party capacity reached the end of its lifecycle, Sonema and Agility Beyond Space jointly planned the transition, including transponder allocation, sequencing and capacity ramp-up, enabling services to migrate without any interruption to Sonema’s customers.

This operational continuity matters most in critical enterprise environments, where backup and failover connectivity must remain available whenever primary infrastructure is disrupted. It reflects a requirement Sonema already meets for banking and financial institutions operating across over 40 countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Connectivity as the foundation for digital services

For four decades, Sonema has designed, deployed and operated managed telecommunications infrastructure for demanding enterprise customers. Today, its value proposition extends far beyond satellite capacity.

Sonema acts as an integrated operator and technology partner, combining:

• Resilient satellite and terrestrial connectivity
• Cloud and hosting services
• Cybersecurity solutions
• SD-WAN and network optimisation
• Managed services and 24/7 operational support

The result for Sonema’s customers is not just bandwidth, but confidence that the digital infrastructure behind their operations stays available and secure.

Sonema serves more than 300 customers across over 40 countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, with particular strength in banking and financial services, energy, oil and gas and mining. Its multilingual network operations centre provides continuous monitoring and operational support for business-critical networks.

Supporting Sonema’s growth across Africa and beyond

Africa remains at the heart of Sonema’s development strategy. As enterprise customers accelerate their adoption of cloud platforms, cybersecurity services and distributed digital infrastructure, reliable connectivity remains the prerequisite that enables all of them.

The agreement with Agility Beyond Space provides Sonema with long-term capacity visibility while preserving the flexibility it needs as satellite technology shifts towards more diverse, multi-orbit architectures. Rather than committing to a single technology model, Sonema combines the most appropriate technologies and partners to deliver the optimum architecture for each customer environment.

The long-term partnership with Agility Beyond Space forms an important component of the first phase of Sonema’s Prosperity strategy, supporting the company’s ambition to scale its capabilities, strengthen its African footprint and keep bringing reliable connectivity and digital services to its customers.

A partnership moving beyond bandwidth

Coming in the year Agility Beyond Space marks its 20th anniversary, the agreement is also a milestone in the company’s own transformation through its new “Horizon” strategy. Under Horizon, the company builds its business around managed outcomes rather than raw capacity alone, delivering connectivity and services alongside partners and taking greater responsibility for the networks it supports.

The Sonema partnership is a practical illustration of that approach: two experienced operators combining their capabilities to support long-term customer outcomes.

Executive comments

Mark Rigolle, Chief Executive Officer of Agility Beyond Space, said: “Our relationship with Sonema is already long and fruitful, and I am delighted to see our businesses grow together. Agreements like this one are what our next decade is made of: deeper partnerships with partners who grow alongside us, just as Sonema has, where we carry real responsibility for what our partner has promised their own customers. Between us we bring sixty years of doing this: four decades of Sonema’s and two of ours, and every year of it now stands behind one vital network.”

Charles Dufourcq, CEO of Sonema, added: “Availability is the foundation of every digital service we deliver. Across Africa and beyond, our customers rely on Sonema to keep critical operations connected, secure and running, every day and in every environment. Deepening our long-term partnership with Agility Beyond Space gives us the committed capacity and operational confidence to continue scaling that promise. In a satellite market evolving rapidly towards increasingly diverse and multi-orbit architectures, selecting the right long-term partners is strategic. This agreement is an important cornerstone of our Prosperity strategy and strengthens our ability, as part of the MBS Group, to combine best-in-class connectivity with cloud, cybersecurity and managed services for our customers across Africa and beyond.”

Two experienced operators, one long-term commitment

This multi-year commitment, one of the largest the two companies have signed to date, brings their complementary strengths together around a single objective: keeping critical enterprise connectivity available, resilient and able to evolve with customers’ future requirements.