Kenya and Tanzania took a step towards a more interconnected East Africa with the launch of a terrestrial fibre-optic link between Dar es Salaam and Mombasa in July 2025. This Global Trends Flash highlights the objectives and features of the new infrastructure project that connects the countries’ respective national broadband networks to submarine cable infrastructure. Kenya was involved in other cross-border terrestrial communications projects in recent years, this Global Trends Flash also highlights.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority and its non-profit subsidiary, the AI Verify Foundation, launched a new AI assurance sandbox. This sandbox, built on insights from an earlier pilot, is designed for both local and international deployers of generative AI applications to undergo testing by specialist technical testers. This Global Trends flash outlines key features of the sandbox, along with insights and recommendations drawn from case studies in the pilot phase. As of August 2025, more than 60 AI-related sandboxes have been launched in several jurisdictions around the world.

This Global Trends Flash discusses the new US AI Action Plan (AIAP). This plan outlines over 90 federal policy actions aimed at achieving global artificial intelligence (AI) “dominance” for the US. The AIAP amounts to a stark departure from the prior presidential administration’s risk-focused AI policy approach. In many jurisdictions around the world, AI risk management is also at the heart of AI policy.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has introduced a guide for adopting privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), and a national data protection certification scheme. This Global Trends Flash outlines key features of these initiatives, which parallel similar initiatives in other jurisdictions such as Japan, Korea, and the UK, amongst others.

This Global Trends Flash provides an overview of the Australian National Anti-Scam Centre’s (NASC) latest initiative: the Romance Scam Fusion Cell (RSFC). The RSFC is the third, temporary multi-stakeholder task force that NASC launches since its creation. But Australia is only one of many countries targeting romance scams, one of the most financially and emotionally damaging scam types around the world.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) announced the establishment of the international application-to-person (A2P) messaging aggregator service licence in July 2025. The new licensing category aims to eliminate grey-route traffic for A2P services, by requiring all inbound international A2P messages terminating in Nigeria to transit through licensed aggregators in the country. This Global Trends Flash also highlights that, across Africa, regulatory frameworks addressing international A2P messaging services remain limited.