When Kenya’s Poa Internet announced a $4m debt raise this week, the headlines were predictable: another African ISP gets European backing to extend connectivity. But hidden in the details is a telling pattern: Finland’s state-owned development financier Finnfund is becoming a cornerstone investor in Africa’s digital infrastructure — and Nokia is often the invisible partner riding alongside.

Poa Internet: Kenya’s low-cost play

Poa Internet, founded in 2015, has carved out a niche by offering budget broadband in Nairobi’s lower-income neighbourhoods. Its trademark “street WiFi” model lets small businesses and households pay less than Kenya’s dominant fibre providers, while still accessing broadband that can support remote work, fintech apps, and streaming.

The company has now secured a $4m loan from Finnfund, with a clear condition: Nokia will supply the fibre technology that underpins the expansion. For Poa, it means more bandwidth, more households connected, and stronger bargaining power against Safaricom’s Home Fibre and Jamii Telecom’s Faiba. For Finland, it signals a state-backed export push.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Finnfund on our mission to bring internet access to every home in Africa,” said Poa’s CEO Andy Halsall. “Using Finnfund’s financing and Nokia’s fibre infrastructure, we will be able to bring Poa’s highly affordable internet service to even more Kenyan communities.”

This is not a one-off. Earlier this year, Finnfund doubled down on South Africa’s Fibertime Group, adding another €2m to a 2023 investment. Fibertime uses Nokia’s fibre hardware in townships where 80% of households remain unconnected. Its model is unusual: internet sold on a pay-as-you-go, time-based basis — more like buying bus tickets than monthly contracts.

Finnfund was quick to praise the Finnish flavour of the deal. “We are of course proud that Nokia’s technology plays such a vital role in making this happen,” said Tuomas Vaulanen, an investment associate at the Helsinki-based fund.

And this is the recurring theme. Whether it’s Kenya, South Africa, or new routes spanning East to Southern Africa with Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Finnfund financing tends to come with a Nokia footprint. Sometimes it’s explicit — Nokia named as a “preferred fibre partner.” Sometimes it’s softer — Nokia routers, modems, and fibre nodes showing up in township networks.

A development mandate, but also an export strategy

Officially, Finnfund is an impact investor. It deploys €200–250m annually in developing countries, with half its portfolio in Africa. Digital infrastructure sits alongside forestry, clean energy, and agriculture as one of its strategic pillars. The EU’s Global Gateway programme — Brussels’ counterweight to China’s Belt and Road — has guaranteed some of these loans.

But the dual mandate is hard to miss. The fund’s literature calls it “Finnish added value.” The logic: Africa gets capital and infrastructure, Nokia gets contracts, and Finland quietly secures export growth in markets that big telcos often shun.

That Nokia is Finland’s most globally recognisable tech brand makes the pairing almost inevitable. 

The financing also comes with political theatre. When Finnish president Alexander Stubb visited Nairobi in May, one of his first stops was not the embassy, but Poa Internet’s operations in Kawangware, a low-income district. The symbolism was clear: Finland is not just exporting fibre hardware, it is exporting a development narrative.

For the EU, which co-finances some of these projects through EFSD+ guarantees, it’s about branding Europe as a “human-centred” digital partner. Henriette Geiger, EU Ambassador to Kenya, praised the Poa deal as “proof that digitalisation is not just a vision, but a reality — one that empowers people, creates opportunities, and strengthens social inclusion.”

The bigger question: does it work?

The developmental logic is clear enough. More broadband lowers barriers to education, healthcare, and e-commerce. It also creates markets for digital payments, e-learning, and streaming platforms.

But there are risks. The affordability gap in African broadband is massive, and even with low-cost models, many households struggle to pay. Pay-as-you-go fibre in South Africa’s townships is clever, but whether it scales beyond early adopters remains uncertain. And critics note that relying on European export-linked finance risks crowding out more local solutions.

Still, for Poa Internet’s 238,000 subscribers and Fibertime’s growing township base, the Finnfund–Nokia pairing may be the only realistic route to connectivity.

Finnfund is now effectively running a parallel African digital fund — debt and equity tickets into ISPs, all with a Nokia angle. It is development finance with a commercial undertone, and a reminder that “aid” and “exports” are never entirely separate categories.

For Kenya’s Poa and South Africa’s Fibertime, that subtle Finnish alignment is paying off in fibre miles and WiFi routers. For Nokia, it means that state-backed impact investing doubles as a new customer pipeline. And for Africa’s digital economy? It means Finland is slowly — and quietly — laying cables under the continent’s streets.